Chapter Text
Will doesn’t stop running as Hannibal calls out to him, taking turns down the many winding corridors at random since it hardly matters which direction he takes in this fucking maze of a house anyway. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the walls can move at this point. He just wants to put as much distance between himself and the impossible being behind him as he can for now until he at least has some room to breathe and think about his situation.
He slows once he can no longer hear the man’s voice or footsteps following, but the walls—it’s not that they actually do move, per se, but there’s definitely something off as he progresses through the hallways. He nearly dismisses it as adrenaline or exhaustion from his run, except that this sense of something other and wrong only builds as his breathing and heartrate even out to normal levels. There’s almost a…a warping to the corridors that he can’t actually see so much as feel happening around him, as if the walls are literally closing in despite remaining perfectly still. He feels watched too, convinced of more than one shadow skittering along the floorboards or gliding just outside his field of view even though there’s nothing every time he tries to get a better look.
Before he set foot in this place, he could have easily believed it was stress making him hallucinate, imagining things. He never thought he’d want to believe that. He still doesn’t really, but trying to make sense of what it means if this is real isn’t exactly helping him feel stable either.
(And speaking of before, before this house, before Hannibal, that was, what, several minutes ago? An hour maybe? Hours? It’s…it’s hard to think about, somehow, harder than anything else in fact, and not as relevant as just finding a way out in the first place, so he stops trying.)
He already knows what it means though, that as he moves along the walls seem to hem him in more and more claustrophobically, understands why it makes him so anxious and uneasy it feels almost as if they’re trying to squeeze the air from his throat and crush him inward with every step he takes further away from Hannibal, and why that feeling lessens when he tests the theory by taking a few experimental steps backwards. That’s an easy one to figure out.
The house doesn’t like him trying to leave. Hannibal doesn’t want him to leave.
But there is still breath in his lungs, and no bruising on his skin to indicate his body is under any sort of pressure from an external force. All of this information added up together leads Will to conclude two things—that whatever force is trying to stop him is technically all in his head, and that he’s more or less heading in the right direction…probably. It’s not a resounding guarantee, but it is the only guidance he has to go on, so Will keeps pushing forward even if his breaths keep coming up short and he has to slow down like he’s trying to navigate through thick, viscous cement inside a steadily narrowing tube.
“I admire your tenacity, kitten, but you do realize that although you’re not actually losing oxygen, your brain thinks it is, and that means you’re going to pass out long before you even see the doorway again.” Will halts in his tracks (and as if to frustratingly prove a point, his breathing immediately becomes easier again when he does).
Gideon leans casually against the doorframe of a room Will hadn’t noticed to his right, a grin that borders somewhere between wry and utterly delighted on his painted lips. He’s also wearing a short gauzy dress with a fur wrap over his shoulders now, which suggests he was likely either heading up to the party or on his way back from it. If he weren’t getting used to the strangeness of this place already, it would almost seem absurd that in a house full of so many people beyond counting, this is the first time Will has encountered anyone again since he fled the wardrobe.
“Also, you’re going the wrong way,” he tosses out lightly when it becomes apparent that Will is choosing only to glare at him tiredly without saying anything. “That’s a cute new look, by the by,” he says, gaze sweeping over the suit and ridiculous shoes Will’s thinking about dumping into a bonfire as soon as he gets home and changes into something out of his own closet. “Although I’d be happy to make a few adjustments here and there to really pretty it up if you’ll let me. No use going on a daring adventure to make your grand escape if you aren’t going to bother putting your most fabulous foot forward to do it.”
“Does that mean you’re here to help me find the right way?” Will asks, deciding to focus on the fact that it doesn’t sound like Gideon plans on stopping him from escaping at least.
Gideon hums and looks thoughtful. “Maybe I am,” he says slowly, less like he’s deciding on the matter and more like it’s a brand new concept he hadn’t considered before. “Oooh, do you suppose that makes me the Cheshire Cat? Oh wait, but you’re dressed more for an Oz theme this time than a Wonderland one, aren’t you? Although the two are very similar. In fact, I think one book is based on the other. And really, when you think about it, they’re both based on far older myths, and those on older ones still, dating farther and farther up the chain all the way back to one original tale. Of course, that means some of the details get a little more smudged or revised with every retelling, but that’s the nature of stories in a nutshell, isn’t it?” Gideon is looking at him like this is something very important that Will should be eager to weigh in his opinion on.
Will reaches up to remove his glasses before remembering he stowed them in his jacket pocket while he was outside and never put them back on once he got here, and instead simply runs his hand tiredly over his face like he was going to anyway. He is not going to throw another weird tantrum and take his frustrations out on the one person he’s run into who seems willing to help, no matter how much he might wish he’d found an ally who wasn’t so easily…distractible. And prone to rambling on about whatever subject his mind has wandered off to. “Abel,” he says, summoning all of the patience he has left. “Are you going to help me out or not?”
“Well, that really depends on you in the end, doesn’t it, kitty cat, but sure, I’ll try my best.” Now the other man is looking at Will like he’s missed something important, but it’s tinged with fond bemusement rather than disappointment. Gideon turns and starts walking down another hallway Will hadn’t realized was there before he has time to really analyze it.
He hasn’t followed the man for more than a few steps either before it feels like the weight of the world is pressing down on him again, squeezing against his chest and urging him to go back, go back. Will struggles to catch up and tries to say something before Gideon can pull too far ahead, but only manages a distressed-sounding wheeze that makes his vision go white, so that he has to quit moving and plant his feet firmly in place again.
“Still choking up?” Abel asks, coming back to Will with a surprised frown. “My, my, you’re really out of sorts about this, aren’t you?”
“Why—” Will coughs, sucks in a breath with his eyes closed, and wills the dizziness to go away. “Why isn’t this affecting you the same way?”
“Oh hon,” Abel says, expression softening sympathetically. “I thought you figured it out. It’s not proximity to the exit that’s giving you a hard time. It’s the intent to use it that’s causing your dilemma.”
Will takes a moment to absorb this, then takes in another deep breath and leans back against the wall with his head in his hands. Resists the urge to slide helplessly down it and sit on the floor with his knees tucked against his chest like a child. Chuckles bitterly until the sound is grating against his own ears, even muffled against his palms, and drops his hands to cross his arms over himself. Only then does he twist his head enough to stare approximately near the space of Gideon’s bared knees and say, “Okay, so…what you’re telling me is that this house—or I guess its master, I should say—can read what people are planning and is just sadistic enough to, for an example, allow us to look at the door all we want so long as we accept that we’re forbidden from actually going through it?”
“No…?” Gideon says, dragging the word out slowly like a question in his own puzzlement. Apparently they’re just confusing the hell out of each other with their constant miscommunication. “It’s not that it’s forbidden, I should say, it’s just that…hmm…” He leans on one shoulder against the same wall as Will and strokes his beard thoughtfully. “Boy, this is rough. I keep forgetting how much you actually are like a fuzzy little newborn when it comes to understanding how all this works.”
“So help me understand.” Will taps his fingers in a nervous pattern against his elbow. “Start with the basics. What exactly is this place? What is…” What is Hannibal? He can’t quite bring himself to ask that one aloud.
“It’s…it’s home, Mr. Graham,” Gideon replies simply. “At least for a time. When I needed it most, after my old life went all to shit, suddenly…there it was. And I’ve been here since. ’Course, none of us gets to stay here forever, but that’s fine,” he says with a dismissive hand wave. “None of us really want to stay that long anyway, for the most part. I’ve stuck around longer than most, but eventually I, too, will one day find myself ready to move on.” He shrugs. “Our residences here are as temporary as we want them to be, but not one soul has ever walked back out through that door the way they came in before they were deemed fit and ready, unless they did something to piss off our humble host and got themselves thrown out.” He tosses a sly glance at Will. “Trust me when I say that no matter how desperate you think you are to leave, you do not want to get thrown out, and that in itself is not even a guarantee anyway. Not when there are such more creative ways available to rid oneself of pests.”
Will shudders to himself, thinking of the blood-stained hat that should have been in evidence lock-up yet somehow wasn’t, and decides he doesn’t need any clarifying details on what that statement loudly implies.
“Now as to your problem, I will say I’ve never seen anyone quite so conflicted as you.” The look Gideon throws him is sly and suggestive once again, bordering on mischievous as they linger longest on Will’s neck. “But I could hardly blame you for it. Those must have been some very yummy pomegranate seeds you swallowed, darling.”
Will’s hand shoots automatically to the sensitive bit of skin Hannibal had latched onto most enthusiastically with his tongue and his teeth, peeking out above his collar and still sweetly painful to the touch. He ducks his head and finds himself unable to continue feigning eye contact. “That’s not…shut up,” he mutters, immediately feeling immature for saying it, a feeling which is not helped by Gideon’s schoolyard snickering. “I’m not conflicted. I just want to go home, Gideon.”
“Well, have you tried the old shoe tapping trick yet?” the other man continues to tease.
Will rolls his eyes, but his lips tug up into an answering smirk in spite of himself. “Do I have to say the words too?” he asks wryly.
“Ideally, but I’m sure just thinking them hard enough will count if you’re too embarrassed, kitten.”
Will huffs, straightening, puts his hands in his pockets, and taps the heels of his oxfords together twice. He’ll never admit even under interrogation that a tiny, superstitious inner voice does chant the famous mantra within the privacy of his own head while he does it. Afterwards, he pointedly glances around the unchanged hallway before letting his gaze fall back to Gideon with a dryly raised eyebrow.
“Ta-da!” announces Gideon with a dramatic sweep of his hands as he pointedly looks around as well. “No place like home sweet home indeed. I guess this settles it.”
The empath sighs, feeling the last of his own good humor trickle out with it. “Gideon, you said you were going to help me.”
“I’m trying to, kitten. Honest, I really am!” Even with the hint of a smile still present, Gideon actually seems pretty earnest and like he isn’t just making fun of him now.
“Then help me. You may like it here and that’s fine, I won’t judge, but I don’t particularly want to be trapped in a house that tries to kill me for wanting to leave it!”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain, it’s not the house—”
“Lecter then,” Will corrects, glancing uneasily behind him as soon as he does, irrationally half-afraid that saying the man’s name aloud might summon him. It doesn’t.
“Will,” Gideon says, and Will turns his head back at the pleading seriousness of his tone. The shorter man takes a tentative half-step towards him. “Don’t you think it’s time to consider that maybe it isn’t just the house you’re having trouble navigating, and these barriers you’re scrambling to climb over are there to tell you you may not know your own mind as well as you thought?”
Will grinds his back teeth together hard enough for it to really hurt before he trusts himself enough to say, “You know what? Forget it. I’ll figure it out on my own.” He ducks around Gideon and sweeps past him, covering a good length of hallway before it occurs to him that he can breathe just fine, probably because he’s only trying to put distance between himself and the other man and not thinking about escape. Realizing this, of course, makes the feeling of suffocation crash into him full force again, and he stumbles and catches himself against the nearest wall.
“Don’t,” he says to the man who hasn’t left despite Will’s brush-off, still following behind him from a careful, respectful distance. “Don’t say it again. Don’t you dare tell me I’m doing this to myself somehow. You have no idea what it feels like!”
“That’s true, kitten,” Gideon agrees. “I’m not the one whose throat closes up at just the thought of running away.”
He can’t think of a single retort to give, wavering with uncertainty now. Could Abel actually be right? What the hell is he supposed to do if it’s himself he’s combatting?
“Is Hannibal’s most faithful mongrel filling your head up with doubts?” The silken voice that echoes from a shadowed corner is accompanied by the self-assured click of heels against hardwood as Bedelia du Maurier steps into view. Her hair has been loosed from its bun to fall in artful waves around her shoulders and a grey and white mink shawl is draped over her shoulders, though it doesn’t hide the emerald and mint shades of her dress or how the dim light glints off the beaded rhinestone fabric in a way that makes them appear almost more like metallic rivets. Will watches her approach warily.
“If it isn’t Queen B herself, come to grace us with her presence,” Gideon snarks. “Was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to put in an appearance, my lady.” It’s an interesting talent, how he can use the most embarrassing nicknames for Will or anyone else he likes and only come across as playful and fond while the grand appellations he gives du Maurier come out of his mouth soaked with dripping disdain.
“Why do I suspect the letter ‘B’ in this instance has nothing whatsoever to do with my name?” she asks with glittering ice behind her sharp smile.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m too polite to say, but I can give a hint as to what it rhymes with,” he answers while making a show of scratching his arm.
“Charming as ever,” she replies with no change in her expression and returns her attention to Will. “You appear to be having some difficulties. I am here to offer you my assistance, Mr. Graham.”
“Good god, of course you are,” Abel mutters to himself. She ignores him.
“And how is it you plan to do that?” Will asks her, still cautious. This woman has made no secret of her instant dislike of him, after all, and despite having no logical reason for it the feeling is already pretty mutual.
“While it is true that this environment reads your thoughts and intentions in order to reshape itself accordingly, there are also forces at work which will attempt to distort and confuse those intentions if you let them.” She sounds a bit like a scientist conducting a study, or a psychiatrist. “You must overcome the whispers which would keep you here.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” Off Will’s frustrated and partway offended look, she gracefully lifts one hand in a placating gesture and says, “You need not do so alone. As I said, I will assist you. You are a strong-willed individual, Mr. Graham, as am I, and it so happens that you and I want the same thing.”
“You want me gone,” Will infers easily. Gideon watches their exchange with a narrow-eyed look, particularly in Bedelia’s direction, but he doesn’t refute anything she’s saying.
She smiles, and Will gets the impression that to her eyes he is nothing more than a filthy and repulsive circus animal who has nonetheless learned an amusing new party trick. “Just so,” she says, and without waiting or asking slips her arm around his and begins leading them down a new corridor. It’s starting to feel like this place is made up of nothing but corridors, but that’s just fine. He’s not particularly interested in seeing what’s in any of the other rooms as they pass.
Gideon still carries on with them at Will’s other side but mercifully doesn’t seek to touch him without permission. Will might be grateful that he can actually keep moving forward now without feeling like there’s an invisible force that would rather choke him out than let him escape, but he doesn’t like the way Bedelia’s hands wrap around his elbow in a nearly proprietary manner. Their grip reminds him of how she held the skeletal bear man’s leash at the party. “Where’s your, uh…” Friend sounds like too strong of a word, but every other term that comes readily to mind seems incredibly insulting. “…your companion?”
“Randall is nearby,” she responds placidly. Will can’t see him anywhere, but now that he’s listening for it, he can just barely make out the whirr of pneumatic limbs and creaking wood straining under the weight of them. He wonders now if the feeling of eyes on him before he ran into Abel was Randall, and tenses instinctively at the idea of being stalked through the house like prey.
His eyes catch movement ahead, only an indistinct blur without his glasses from this distance, but when he squints he thinks he can make out an unusually large shadow skulking about in the brush beneath bare, swaying tree limbs and a darkened sky.
Wait a minute. Trees? Sky? Will blinks, and is disappointed to realize upon looking again that the vision of “outside” his imagination conjured up is just the same branching pattern of black antlers on a grey background that decorates most of the wallpaper throughout of the house.
Gideon makes an intrigued noise and Bedelia, whose hands tighten around his arm, hesitates a moment before rolling her shoulders back and continuing to march forward. Huh. So maybe not just his imagination then.
“Does that kind of thing happen a lot?” he dares to ask, not as worried as he’d usually be about calling attention to something that might make people think he’s crazy.
“Not exactly,” Gideon answers, bubbly amusement in his voice that once again makes Will feel like he’s missing something big. Bedelia softly frowns.
It happens again, when Will snidely wonders if the décor could possibly be any gloomier, and the next thing he knows they are no longer walking along a dour yet sumptuously designed hallway with wooden floors and paneling but down into an echoing maze of rough stony catacombs dotted throughout with cobwebbed alcoves, some of which are empty while others hold urns and dried out bones and dripping candles.
“Stop it!” Bedelia snaps at him, clearly unsettled and digging her fingernails more sharply into the crook of his sleeve. Gideon snickers while Will pats her hand in an awkward attempt to provide comfort. Outwardly her face doesn’t change, but disgust slithers behind her eyes as if she’s been touched by slime, so he quickly stops.
“Relax, your queenship, we’re still on the correct path,” Gideon says, licking his finger and pulling it back out of his mouth with a soft pop to hold it up in the air as if he’s feeling for a change in the winds. “Besides, if it really bothers you, you know perfectly well we can get it to settle it into another layout in a jiffy. We just need to distract from all this dreary silence. Will, honey, be an angel and talk to us about something interesting, won’t you?”
“Um.” Gideon’s request for small talk is a task far and away outside of Will’s normal realm of expertise. “How, uh, how did you guys come to be here?” he asks, lobbing the responsibility back onto his supposed tour guides.
“That is none of your business,” Bedelia tells him stiffly.
“I murdered my wife and her parents,” Gideon answers cheerfully.
“What?” Will almost stops, but Bedelia tugs on his arm and urges him to keep moving.
“Yes, it’s a very funny and very sad story, you see,” Gideon explains. “I won’t bore you with the details. Long story short, she caught me trying on some of her makeup and we had a row about it that led to her giving me the cold shoulder for a couple of days. Then Thanksgiving with her folks rolls around, and I’ve hardly said anything to anyone other than, ‘Could you pass the mashed potatoes?’ before she decides to spill the beans to them right there at the table. Cue the outpouring of ugly, nasty, deeply homophobic ranting coming at me all of a sudden from three different sides, and next thing I remember, the carving knife’s in my hand and everyone else is bleeding out a very pretty shade of red all over the shag rug.” Gideon smiles like the memory is a nostalgic one, but there’s a tightness to it that perhaps no one looking at him except for Will could ever possibly see.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Gideon shrugs and mutters something quietly that sounds like “c’est la vie.”
“Anywho, I had to go on the run, but eventually I stumbled onto this place the way everybody does, and voila! Here I am.”
“Were you to interview others here, Mr. Graham, you would quickly discover stories like Mr. Gideon’s to be a common theme,” Bedelia interjects suddenly. “To receive an invitation requires a sacrifice, you see, often in blood.”
“Does that mean you’ve killed someone too?” he asks, and dimly notes a lack of fear or guilt in acknowledging that he’s apparently been associating with an entire madhouse of murderers. Neither will do him good here anyway.
“I’ve already told you I won’t discuss that.”
“Generally speaking, it’s how many of us pay rent too if we’re planning on staying awhile,” Gideon tacks on airily. That revelation sends Will reeling a bit, but he recovers from it quicker than he’d usually give himself credit for.
“You’re still killing people,” he mutters dully, not bothering to make it into a question. It…it makes sense, actually. It’s culty and weird but it explains a lot about the worshipful way everyone looks up to Hannibal and tries to please him. That’s always been the nature of deals with the devil, or ancient and forgotten old gods, or…or whatever the fuck Hannibal Lecter is really. Ritual sacrifice in that context might even seem normal to a set of people who already have a taste for violence and spend part of their lives separated from reality inside of a magical house that changes its appearance on a goddamned whim, perhaps literally.
Unbidden, he recalls the bloodied hat in the closet upstairs and the sudden revelation that Hannibal had been on that farm, watching Will unseen. He’d gotten the sense then that Hannibal was the true cause of that murder, but not necessarily that he’d actually done it. He swallows. “Abel, that crime scene in the cornfield…was that you?”
“Cornfield?” Gideon asks, apparently having to think about it. “Oh, I remember! Yes, that’s one of mine, kitten, guilty as charged.”
“You remember?” Will asks bemusedly. “I should hope so. It happened this morning.”
“Well, of course it did. It always does. You’re here and you’re asking about it, so it must have happened today.”
Will isn’t sure what to make of this response. “You’re saying it happens every Halloween?”
“It happens today, and today, as you know, is always this day.” That answer reminds Will of Hannibal’s strange prevaricating in the closet when he’d said something similar, and it leaves him feeling a little uneasy again. He looks to Bedelia to see if he can glean some kind of hint from her, but she merely gazes on ahead without acknowledging either of them as if this line of questioning bores her.
He’s starting to believe there’s something about the way time runs here that doesn’t quite match up with how it flows out in the world he’s familiar with, but he hasn’t unraveled how exactly. He probably won’t know until he gets out of here, in which case he can only hope there are no terribly adverse consequences, like finding he’s been supplanted a hundred years into the future like Rip van Winkle or something. Who will have taken care of the dogs while he’s been gone if that’s the case? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Abel grins at him. “So, what did you think of it?” It takes Will a moment to refocus on the conversation and realize Gideon is asking him about the murder scene. “Riddled with clichés, yes, I admit, but sometimes you just gotta cut loose and have a little fun without worrying too much about expectations, you know? Besides, it sounds like it got your attention anyway,” he says, sounding supremely pleased and proud of that fact.
“It…it was lovely,” Will says faintly for lack of a more appropriate answer to give. Morality has no place in this discussion, that much is obvious, and the praise leaves Gideon glowing like a kid whose parents just stuck a drawing of his on the fridge, so Will doesn’t see the harm in it. Bedelia’s nails dig sharply into his arm again.
“Careful,” she warns in an undertone, lips almost touching his ear, when Gideon pulls a little ahead of them. “Remember, you don’t want to start thinking the way these people do and you do not belong here.”
Will bites his lip, looking away, and doesn’t tell her that it may already be too late for at least part of that statement. Idly, he notes the change of scenery again. It had brightened and opened up gradually as they’d been talking into what is now a light and airy, high-ceilinged chamber with ornate stained glass windows that Will is sure don’t really look outside, as they are sparkling with light from an unknown source and he is fairly confident—without being able to explain why and in spite of his newfound knowledge about the weirdness of time here—that the sun is not up yet.
As if in response to his certainty, the light abruptly goes out. He blinks, and it’s not a vaunted chamber anymore. It’s the foyer he first walked into when he arrived.
“Finally,” Bedelia mutters, and releases his arm.
Will is almost disappointed to be honest. Since the suffocation problem became a non-issue, he’d expected some other form of resistance from the house or its residents, but beyond their ambling walk taking a lot longer than it probably should have, nothing else had tried to stop him from reaching the entrance.
“Suppose I was hoping you’d changed your mind by now, but here we are,” says Abel. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just head on back upstairs now. I’m not too fond of the goodbye scene,” he adds, smiling a little sadly.
“Hey, Abel,” Will says, awkwardly trying to think of something to say to the man who, regardless of his more peculiar proclivities like casual murder and discussions of such, has been nothing but kind and helpful to him since he got here. He settles lamely on, “It was, um, it was nice meeting you.”
“Until next time, pussycat.” Abel winks.
Will can’t help but laugh at that. “Yeah, sure,” he says. Next time. He doesn’t point out that he doesn’t think there’ll be a next time.
Gideon departs, and Will realizes after a minute that the only reason he’s still gazing up at the bannister is because he half-expects someone else to show up at that spot. He looks away again, swallowing down disappointment. He shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s harder if…it would be harder.
Bedelia smiles serenely at him, unmoving, and it’s the most sincere expression of happiness she’s given to anyone this entire night. “The goodbye scene is my favorite part,” she says in answer to his unspoken question.
He snorts. Of course it is. “Charming as ever,” he says. She’s in too good of a mood now apparently to even let having her own words fired back at her annoy her.
His pale hand brushes against the dark cherry wood of the door, and it feels familiar, as warm to the touch as he remembers when he first knocked on it from the other side. That already feels like something that happened a long, long time ago, in another life, or a half-remembered dream. He grasps the handle, turns it, and the door swings open easily.
It’s dark out, just like he expected, so dark he can’t see the ground in fact, but there is no more rain at least. If he weren’t staring out into it so intently, he would see nothing wrong, no reason at all not to step right out over the threshold into the waiting night.
His fingers cling onto the doorframe tightly, heart thundering loudly in his chest while his brain tries to process the reality of what he’s seeing.
“What? What is it?” Bedelia asks. Will stands aside to let her see for herself. “I see no problem here,” she says when she’s gotten close enough to have a quick glance.
Will huffs a laugh. “Look harder.”
She does, inching forward cautiously with one hand on the door itself as if she fears Will might try to push her outside. “Ah. That is…unexpected,” she says, which Will finds to be a rather underwhelming reaction to realizing one is looking out through an open doorway into the vast, cold void of outer space. For Will, what had been most shocking wasn’t even that he couldn’t see the ground because there was no ground, no Earth for his feet to touch down on if he had made the mistake of walking straight out without paying attention. It was the stars. The stars were all wrong.
Not only were they no longer on Earth, they weren’t even near it.
“No matter,” says Bedelia brusquely, stepping back. “Try again.” Will stares at her for a moment and she gives a very unimpressed look back as though he is being incredibly slow and says, “Shut the door, then open it again to where you want to go.”
Right. Why not? If thinking about the desired outcome works well enough for inside the house—or…ship? portal? whatever the hell it is—then why shouldn’t it work on the doorway as well? Will closes it, shuts his eyes for a moment and thinks about home, then opens it again.
Will blinks, and half a second later the Will on the other side of the doorway also blinks. He hears a startled breath over his shoulder before he sees the Bedelia over the other Will’s shoulder gasp. After a couple more dizzying seconds of looking into the exact same room he’s standing in and watching the by turns puzzled and morbidly fascinated expressions stealing across his own features in real time except on a small delay (the Bedelia in the background just looks mildly ill), Will straightens back and slams the door shut again with more force than necessary, and probably only imagines he can feel the weight of another door slamming directly against it on the other side another half-second later. Probably.
“Okay,” he says, breath coming out a little shaky. “Third time’s always the charm right?” he jokes, clearing his throat. “Okay, so let’s…let’s try that again.” He looks to Bedelia first to make sure she’s doing alright. She looks a little paler than before, but otherwise no longer shaken up, and after a deep, centering breath is perfectly composed again and gives a small, authoritative nod to indicate that he may proceed.
With a centering breath of his own, Will opens the door for the third time.
The doorframe is set flush against a solid, flat wall. Will brushes a hand over it just to make sure that it really is solid. His fingertips graze over the now familiar wallpaper, reassured to feel beneath it the firm smoothness of thick plaster which is most likely layered over heavy brick.
“Huh.” He looks over to Bedelia again and shrugs.
“Oh, you are impossible,” she says, supremely fed up. “After all this time, why do you hesitate now? Why must you continue to drag this out?” Will raises an eyebrow at her.
“You’re blaming me for this? Why am I not surprised?” Will chuckles. Surely if anyone should be upset about this development, it’s him. It’s hard to muster much beyond cold amusement, however, at seeing her so wound up.
“Of course I blame you,” she hisses. “You could open that door correctly and already be back in your own bed, but instead you…” She pauses, seeming to acknowledge at last her own rising temper, and takes another deep breath to steady herself. “If you insist on having your hand held, then fine. We will open the door together,” she says, outstretching her hand for Will to take with a forced expression of pleasant magnanimity. “It worked to get you this far, after all.”
Will looks down at the hand being offered, then back up to her face. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the wall. “No. Not until you cut the innocent act at least, Bedelia, and explain yourself. Why do you want to get rid of me so badly?”
She struggles to maintain her patently false affability, for appearance’s sake only he assumes since she can’t possibly believe he’d ever actually buy it, but it’s easy to see the cracks already starting to form. “You would accuse me of putting on an innocent act?” she asks, her words measured and cold, falling from her lips like carefully chipped away layers of ice. “You, who have so long played the part of the naïve, fresh-faced, little doll swept up by the tides against his choosing, you no longer even know who you are anymore?”
“Excuse me?” Will says, arms falling from his chest to his sides as he straightens.
“You can never just leave well enough alone,” she accuses. “You could be out there living whatever perfectly ordinary, idyllic little life you’ve made for yourself and just stay there, yet you persist in coming back so you can play out this little farce of yours over and over and over again.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks, taking a step towards her. She hurries to take a step back, and from a shadowy alcove nearby, her pet Randall shifts his stance in a soft whirr and creak of bones Will has mostly ignored up til now, letting it fade into background noise for as long as he had a need to keep Bedelia around but never dismissing it entirely from his notice or losing track of where it was coming from. Will still doesn’t acknowledge him openly, keeping his focus on Bedelia for now, but he doesn’t move toward her again.
“I am talking about this tedious game everyone indulges you in,” she says. “But perhaps me especially. The rest of them play along in the vain hope that one day you will choose differently, Hannibal most of all.” She smiles thinly. “I play because it is a small enough price to pay, tiresome as it gets, and because I understand better than anyone else the truth inside the myth—that no matter what sordid details may get altered in the retelling, the ending is always the same.”
Will’s eyes narrow. “You know, I really don’t get you, Bedelia, and that means something coming from me. You don’t like living here. You don’t even like Hannibal, not really, and you sure as shit don’t care about anyone else either. Tell me, is the power trip really so addictive? You claim not to enjoy the game, but from where I’m standing, this is the only time you truly get to indulge in your own conflated ego and pretend you’re actually someone special, someone important.”
“You righteous, reckless, twitchy little man,” she snarls, now the one stepping into his space. “You have grown more and more determined over the years to paint me as the villain of your twisted little fantasy, I can only presume because you are too weak to keep resisting the siren call of what Hannibal Lecter offers you. Well then, if you are going to insist,” she says, and raises her hand to strike him across the face, an assault he easily deflects by grabbing onto her wrist.
The great bone beast springs out from the shadows, prompted into action by the sight of another laying their hand on his mistress, just as she doubtlessly intended. Will shoves her away from him and dodges barely in time to avoid having his head crushed in by one of Randall’s large claws.
The bone suit is formidable, designed for rending and maiming in bloody, brutal fashion. It had also screamed out in overcompensation for the milquetoast man inside of it to Will on first sight. Randall is slow, uncoordinated, coltish, and unused to prey that actually fights back. It’s almost too easy in the end for Will to use the overburdened man’s weight against him to knock him onto his back and beat him senseless with nothing but his fists. The other is about as helpless as a crab flipped back onto its shell but he seems not to recognize this, still trying to swipe at Will and shove him away.
Something within Will that he has always tried to bury, a creeping darkness in his veins that sings out for payment in blood and violence, guides his hands now to snap the other’s neck as a mercy to spare him any further indignity. His lip curls back in a silent snarl. He feels better, as if the mere fact of Randall’s death is an alchemical force that nourishes some craving long unheeded, yet also disappointed that his first calculated murder in memory would be so unchallenging.
He looks up at Bedelia, still kneeling over the body and panting, and says, “You’re gonna have to brainwash a better bodyguard next time.” She clutches her shawl tighter over her shoulders, eyeing him warily, but doesn’t get the chance to say anything before another voice softly calls out Will’s name. Will turns his head sharply towards it and Bedelia’s lips thin to keep from grimacing.
Hannibal walks down the staircase, one hand gliding smoothly over the railing, and it’s as graceful and elegant as Will recalls from earlier in the evening, but when he looks carefully and offers the man a tentative smile, he can see a hint of unsteadiness to his expression and in how he carries himself. So. Will Graham can unsettle him with just a look. That’s very good information to have.
Of course, it stands to reason that the reverse is also true, and when Hannibal Lecter cradles Will’s face as he stands, Will quickly forgets that there’s anyone else in the room.
“I will never understand you two,” says a disdainful feminine voice that has already slid into insignificance in Will’s mind.
“That’s right, Bedelia,” says Hannibal without ever looking away from the man in front of him. “You won’t.” Heels click against hardwood, then carpet, carrying their owner further away until Will and Hannibal are left truly alone.
It is unclear who leans in first, but their mouths come together and each man kisses the other like he will drown without the other’s breath on his tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Will murmurs against Hannibal’s lips when they part enough to allow for speech. Even now, he still doesn’t remember anything or understand much, but in Hannibal’s arms he can sense the truth of certain things Bedelia was saying.
Hannibal brushes a stray curl from Will’s face and kisses a spot above his brow. “I have done so before, but without memory or the right context to get used to the idea quickly, it has always overwhelmed you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re kind of overwhelming regardless.” Hannibal’s eyes crinkle with amusement. “So,” he inquires next, “I was right about the spaceship, huh?”
“I prefer to think of it as a palace.” Will rolls his eyes. “The palace we built together. Our hearts’ desires made manifest in both the physical and the metaphysical.” Hannibal’s voice turns softer and sadder. “For a time, I thought it would be enough to keep you happy. You wanted to make it a shelter for wayward souls who could not find their footing elsewhere.” He pauses a moment, and Will feels the urge to apologize in the interim, but he doesn’t really know what he would be apologizing for exactly and doesn’t think Hannibal would be particularly interested in getting one. “You grew restless, however, and began to talk frequently of the good you could be doing out in the world instead, though you insisted I remain to shepherd the flock we had begun cultivating. There was nothing I could say or do which would compel you to stay.”
Will ducks his head and swallows. “Sounds like past me was kind of a dick.” The other man crooks a finger beneath his chin to force him to meet his eyes.
“I would not change who you are for anything, Will Graham.” Will’s vision swims. You already have, he wants to say, but even he isn’t entirely sure what he means by that. “This stolen moment in time together, trapped in amber, will hold me over until the next one, and that until the next after it, until such time that you decide you are ready to call only one hearth home.”
Will thinks the man’s hands might be shaking as he tugs him nearer. He’s pretty sure he’s also not the only one.
“Sun’s almost up,” he hears himself say against Hannibal’s ear. He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he understands its significance. They only ever have today, whatever day it is that Will happens to stumble upon this place again. Less than today really, since it is usually nightfall whenever he arrives. But the sunrise is for his other life, away from Hannibal. Will is never still here for them to see tomorrow together.
Will thinks he understands why he perpetually forgets as well, why this will be no more than a passing dream when he wakes with his head on his own pillow tomorrow. It is because it would be too painful to remember what he is constantly giving up, and he is ultimately a selfish creature, not as strong as Hannibal is to keep on living with the knowledge. (Though if he were to ask, Hannibal would say it is only fair this way, as at least he has others for company and to keep him occupied during the long interims between, while Will must always venture out alone.)
Hannibal’s hold around him tightens for just a moment, then lets him go. He waits at the bottom of the stairs to watch, Randall’s corpse kicked aside from view for somebody else to butcher later. He will not be in any sort of mood to deal with it himself later, even knowing that it is one of Will’s kills, since the man himself will not be around to share in the experience.
It feels like Will is having an out-of-body experience as his feet carry him to the door again, but when he opens it, his little farmhouse in Wolf Trap is there waiting for him. He can see the sky just beginning to lighten beyond the horizon. He was right. The sun will be up soon.
He can’t look back now, even though he can still feel Hannibal’s eyes on him, because it would be too hard. It’s time. His hand grips the doorframe, one foot hovering over the threshold. Time to go.
Time to go, Will.
Go, go, go, go, go, GO!
He’s being ridiculous. He should get a move on, not drag this out pointlessly and painfully for both of them. He has to do this. He can’t stay. He doesn’t belong here. There are forces at work which will attempt to distort and confuse your intentions if you let them. He has a career and a happy, ordinary, idyllic life in the countryside with his pack of strays to get back to. What more could he want than that really? You must overcome the whispers which would keep you here.
“Will? Beloved, is something the matter?”
You must overcome. “Son of a bitch,” he whispers. The sky lightens further, the sun just starting to peek over the horizon. His head hurts. It really, really hurts like…like it would just be lovely to step over the threshold and breathe in the fresh air for a little while, wouldn’t it?
Overcome. Will stumbles backwards and slams the door shut, leaning his forehead against it, one hand screwed tightly around the knob still and the other hand screwed tightly around the one holding it to keep it steady. Hannibal is beside him now, petting his hair comfortingly, confused as fuck beyond a doubt but that’s just fine because so is Will. But what about the dogs? The dogs, of course, he can’t just leave them!
So he won’t leave them. Easy. Deep breath, in and out. Will straightens and Hannibal takes a step back to allow him room. Will opens the door again. Now instead of the yard outside his house, the doorway opens into his house. Dawn slowly creeps in through the curtains. Six dogs perk up in their beds in surprise to see their favorite person suddenly appear when they hadn’t heard him coming up the road.
There’s the sundries of his life out in the real world, all his knickknacks and curios and books and the adorable little piano that came with the house that he can never keep in tune. There’s his bed, which looks so wonderful and inviting and reminds him that he hasn’t slept. He could use a good nap, just walk into his house and curl up and let the night wash away a forgotten, curious dream…
He whistles once and the dogs dart in past his feet, sniffing around interestedly and not in the least perturbed to find themselves in another room they’ve never been in before instead of outdoors. Many of them head straight for the body left on the floor to investigate it.
Will counts, making sure they’re all in, and closes the door a second time. He turns then and grips onto Hannibal’s shirt for balance. “Hold me,” he pleads, and the other man’s arms are already enveloping around him before he’s finished getting the words out. “Hold me tight and do not let go,” he demands, and it says something wonderful about how well they fit together even now, even after all the time they’ve spent apart, that Hannibal doesn’t even question it or demand an explanation, just squeezes him tighter exactly the way Will wants and kisses his hair softly and says “Will” like he can’t believe this is finally happening. Will almost can’t believe it either.
It’s getting easier, the doubts and misgivings that he should hurry up and go, just shove Hannibal away from him and run outside, are already fading into what feels less like compulsion that’s been itching in the back of his brain for longer than he can remember and more like nagging, annoying intrusive thought that’ll go away on its own. He just needs to ride it out for a few more minutes. Just a few minutes longer. He just needs to be able to see tomorrow with Hannibal, then he can explain and they’ll be able to figure it out and go forward from there.
The walls are made of tall, wide windows now that allow the morning light to spill in and imbue the entire front room with a warm, ethereal glow.
*
On the morning of November 1st, when Will Graham fails to show up for a scheduled meet-up over coffee with a long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Alana Verger-Bloom drives out to her friend’s house, concerned when her calls go not to voicemail but to an automated message stating that service to that number is not available. There is no one home, but the front door is wide open and all of the dogs are gone. They presumably got outside that way, she thinks at first, until she realizes that the only set of footprints and tire tracks in the fresh mud out in the yard are her own. Immediately, she calls Jack Crawford.
Twelve hours later, Graham’s station wagon is found on the side of the road. It is in fine working condition, leaving it unclear as to why it has been abandoned. It is days later before a search party discovers the broken remnants of his mobile phone in an empty field approximately half a mile off from where the vehicle was found.
Will Graham is never seen or heard from again.
*
The tea steeps. Bedelia adjusts the cuff of her sleeve while she patiently waits. She wonders how long Hannibal Lecter will take to finish brooding alone in his chambers this time. It has been about a week, by her estimate, since the last “visit” came to a conclusion, and no one has seen him since that night. This is not irregular behavior after a visit, though it usually lasts only a day or two at most. Some of the behaviors exhibited by his wayward…partner were a bit unexpected during this cycle, however, requiring a bit more blunt force on her part than she is generally comfortable exercising to achieve the necessary result, so that may provide some explanation for his own conduct as well. It will be interesting to see what Hannibal might have noticed and what sort of suspicions may require a bit of smoothing out to ensure they remain on a more or less even keel with one another.
She has no doubt that Lecter will come to her in time. He always does in the end. She has spent some time honing her skills as a therapist, after all, and that makes her an excellent listener.
She removes the infuser and stirs in a bit of honey, then turns around to return to her chair.
Something small and furry runs over her foot and she nearly shrieks, but it thankfully comes out instead as a more dignified, if somewhat pained, gasp for breath as droplets of hot tea spill over her fingers. At least she did not drop the cup or saucer. She will have to sternly scold Peter for allowing one of the wretched creatures from his menagerie to run loose and somehow make its way into her private study. It is a truly hideous white dog that stares up at her with its tongue lolling. Bedelia considers whether or not it would scuff up her shoe even more were she to kick it.
“Tss. Zoe. Come here.” The dog obeys the command right away, while conversely Bedelia goes very still. Finally, slowly, she completes her turn.
“What have I said to you about getting underfoot, hmm?” Will Graham looks up from the dog in his lap to smile up at her pleasantly. He is wearing pressed black slacks and a navy shirt and does not seem concerned about getting tiny white dog hairs all over either of them. He is sitting in her chair. “Hello, Bedelia.”
“Hello, Mr. Graham,” she says, and silently must applaud herself for the absence of a waver in her voice. The sun has risen on tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…) and Will Graham is still here. Years of work (decades, centuries, epochs) crumble away into dust at her feet.
“Please, we’re old friends here, aren’t we?” he says, letting a bit of surprisingly charming Southern drawl enter into his voice. She is not sure if he was ever really Southern. In all the time she has known them both, it has never been clear to her whether or not Graham and Lecter were ever even truly men. “Call me Will.”
She does not respond to this, but she does lower herself to sit on her couch and drink her tea, because to do anything else at this stage is to signify weakness. She will not chum the waters with her own blood if there is even the smallest chance she can still salvage this.
“The dog is yours then?” she hears herself asking, an insufferable inanity, but silence is worse.
“Mm-hm,” Will responds simply, and scratches the mutt affectionately under its chin. She does not think about the dog hairs and skin cells getting onto her furniture. She cannot afford the luxury of petty concerns at present and it is not really her furniture, a fact which she has never been more painfully aware of than at this precise moment.
“Thought about it and realized how awfully silly it was of me to keep two separate houses for strays all this time when one of them was more than big enough and then some already,” he laughs, and this is the moment when Bedelia du Maurier understands beyond an irrevocable doubt that her hubris has caught up with her at last.
In the beginning, it was purely about the furtherance of science for her—a chance to observe up close the psychology of two entities of unknown origin, an opportunity she could not waste, especially when it became apparent that with the right words and enough subtlety and careful experimentation over time, they could be manipulated just as any human could, albeit with some unique immunities as well as vulnerabilities. The environment in which they resided and brought humans to live with them in a curious symbiotic state, for instance, gave them both certain strengths while also opening them up to some interesting exploits, as a joint creation of both their minds as well as possibly an extension of them.
When it occurred to her that their own symbiosis to each other would be a rife field of study all its own, especially in regards to forced long-term separation, it had been only natural that as a resident and close confidant in addition to her role as scientist, personal bias would be unavoidable in her decision of which to clip away from the nest and how, and this, she can admit, may have been her first mistake. In hindsight, giving the one which had already frightened and repulsed her most more cause to feel disconnected and unstable, and then failing to keep her biases in greater check as the experiment ran on and ingratiate herself to him more, might have been an oversight on her part.
“You haven’t asked me how,” Will points out, still affable. He keeps his eyes on the dog rather than on her. It is hateful, the rush of gratitude she feels toward him for this kindness.
“How?” she asks, and feels her hands begin to finely tremble. She sets her teacup and saucer on the coffee table before she can cause them to clatter too much.
“I followed your advice to bear in mind how my values and intentions might be…persuaded, and I asked myself a question.” He looks up at her again and Bedelia disappoints herself by flinching. “Was it always my idea to leave, or did we let someone else in who might’ve thought of it first?”
She will not plead. Those eyes tell her there is no recourse in pleading, and if she must give up her dignity, out of all of her own personal values, she only hopes it will be the one which goes last.
“You haven’t asked me if Hannibal knows,” he tells her next. She’s sure she doesn’t need to ask.
“Does Hannibal know?” tumbles from her lips anyway, because apparently it has already been decided that she will give the monster in her closet anything it asks of her now.
“He does.” This answer comes not from in front of her but beside her, and she startles badly, craning her head to find Hannibal Lecter standing beside her armrest, one hand resting lightly on the back of the couch behind her head. “You have been quite naughty, Dr. du Maurier,” he informs her. “Taking advantage of mine and Will’s hospitality was most discourteous.”
She feels the seat cushions shift, and snaps her head around again to find Will Graham now settled onto the sofa beside her, elbows resting casually atop his knees as he looks at her with the same terrifying charismatic amiability and candor as before.
“Now, what’s to be done about that?”