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Bedelia is neither dewy-eyed nor naive.
The moment Will Graham announces Hannibal’s impending release, she knows that she is plainly marked.
If Hannibal is the hunter, Will is the collector. Before Will walks out of her office for the last time, she looks into his eyes and sees herself lost in the middle of a misty forest, the fleshiest part of her arm freshly grazed by a bullet. Even though Hannibal is miles away in her fantasy, meaning that her death is hardly intimate, Will crosses the forest floor quickly. Efficiently. The soles of his shoes snap twigs and crunch dry leaves, leaving her ears to perk at every soft sound. He will be the one who leads Hannibal right to her, wounded and trying to hide, for their final parting shot.
She spends the afternoon following Will’s appointment ripping the pages out of his file and burning them in the fireplace. When the FBI investigate her office, she wants no trace of the two men left behind.
Even though she is a victim on paper, just another mark in Hannibal’s little brown book, she knows that she will be investigated vigorously. For a moment she is jealous of Will’s forgotten wife; coddled by the FBI, lucky to lay in a hospital bed instead of Hannibal’s claw foot tub. Poor Bedelia, strung along behind two men who are made of more monster than flesh.
The official news report comes three days after Bedelia burns the file, and four days after Will leaves her office with that sharp, self satisfied smirk on his face. She is in the middle of cooking dinner, which is deliciously appropriate, when the first news ticker begins to slide along the bottom of her television screen.
PATIENT ESCAPED FROM BALTIMORE STATE HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE, it briefly says, before music begins to trumpet from the television speakers and a Breaking News warning splashes across the screen.
“Authorities are confirming that a patient has escaped from the Baltimore State Hospital,” The news anchor begins, looking particularly stoic as he shuffles his note cards and looks into the camera wearily. “Although it has not been confirmed, unnamed officials are warning that the patient may be related to the Chesapeake Ripper. The patient is described as a caucasian male, approximately six foot one, with greying hair. Police warn that he is considered armed, and very dangerous.”
An understatement, Bedelia thinks, tossing back a mouthful of wine.
Referring to Hannibal as “armed and dangerous” is so wholly, wildly inaccurate that it makes her teeth ache. While Baltimore residents are looking out for a psycho-eyed man dressed in black tactical gear and weaponry, Hannibal will simply slip through the cracks like he always does. Bedelia can practically see it now: Hannibal, dressed in a brand new camel colored coat, openly walking the streets with Will at his side. Though, she muses, as she pours the remaining half bottle of wine into the cooking pot, referring to Will as Hannibal’s weapon would not be terribly inaccurate.
She hopes that Jack is better prepared than history indicates he likely will be. Hannibal alone is more than capable of taking down the majority of Baltimore’s police force, and with Will at his side - well. Bedelia would not want to stumble across the crime scene.
Bedelia knows that somewhere inside of Hannibal and Will are the threads of humanity that everyone possesses. The familiar tug in response to someone else’s tears, the sore spot that only sadness and melancholy could possess; all of those wonderful, palpable things that made humanity human. Unfortunately for everyone else, when it came to Hannibal and Will, those threads were only - almost exclusively - tied up with one another.
Hannibal could not see tears until they fell from Will’s eyes, and even then, sometimes the thread still threatened to snap.
~
One month later, Bedelia is not surprised when Will turns up on her doorstep.
He looks relaxed, practically boneless as he grins at her, his eyes flickering over her face, her hair, her throat. When he glances down at the finger of scotch she’s holding against one hip, she notices the fresh scar marring one side of his face. It’s bright, noticeable even in the twilight of the night that falls behind him, puffy and pink and fresh. She wonders if the scar is something Hannibal is proud of, or if it perverts him.
“Bedelia,” He greets. Hearing his voice again puts her back in that therapy room in a snap-flash, the syrupy, milky way that he used to talk about Hannibal dripping from her ears. His eyes soften at the alarmed expression on her face, and ah, there the monster is, inside. He lowers his chin, pretending to be coy, and smiles, “It’s been a long time.”
Lips twisting, Bedelia eyes him again from foot to head. He has clearly been living well. After a beat, she replies, “Not long enough.”
Before she can add anything else, there’s a flash in Will’s eyes. It lights up his face like a marquee for a split second, and then an arm wraps around her torso from behind. It’s not difficult to guess who it is, even without the familiar press of muscle and hip giving it away.
“So nice to see you again, my dear,” Hannibal murmurs into her ear, raising a sharp blade to her throat.
~
It’s practically a family reunion, she muses to herself, as her head lolls to the side, compliments of Hannibal’s disco pharmacologist.
With no tolerance left for the ultimately familiar drug cocktail, she assumes she passed out soon after Hannibal injected her. Upon waking, all she is able to remember is the strange, suffocating feeling of her vision narrowing to tiny pinholes before her entire body went limp. She’d slid down against the restraints Hannibal had used to knot her to the dining chair, and passed out.
Now, she is dressed beautifully. A navy blue beaded dress she has never seen before, a new gold necklace, and earrings that feel as though they practically drip from her ear lobes.
“The guest of honor,” Hannibal announces in her ear, as he finishes strapping her arms to the rests of the antique wooden chair. Nevermind the fact that this is her home, her kitchen, her food, and her flesh…
It takes her longer than she thought it would to realize that her leg is missing from the knee down.
Bedelia exhales a short, scared breath, and watches as Hannibal walks back into the kitchen.
Her heart is pounding loudly against the confines of her chest despite the waning effects of the drugs. Bedelia jerks both wrists once, testing the strength of her restraints, and cries out softly when she pinches the soft skin on the insides of her wrists between the leather and wood.
Unable to do anything else, Bedelia looks to Hannibal. He’s standing at the gas stove top in the kitchen with his back to her, and the majority of his attention trained on the dish he’s preparing. Despite the three years Hannibal spent locked away in solitary, Bedelia can still see the way his back muscles bunch and pull beneath the light t-shirt he is wearing. He clearly hasn’t pulled his dinner clothes on quite yet - instead he is dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans and a thin grey t-shirt. What you wear when you’re on the run, and everyone who ever knew you only ever saw three piece suits and expensive cashmere sweaters, Bedelia muses.
Finally, achingly, she inches her fingers toward against the table top, and slides her wine glass towards herself by the base. Hannibal has been kind enough to provide her with a straw.
She keeps her eyes trained on the kitchen door as she sips her wine through the straw.
Although Will has spent the majority of his time at the opposite counter, cutting something on the cutting board, he sets his knife down against the counter top and crosses the room quietly.
He walks up behind Hannibal, and for one second - one split second that goes by so fast, it might as well have never happened at all - Bedelia thinks about what would happen if Will simply plunged the paring knife into the back of Hannibal’s head. The side of his throat would work nicely, as well, as long as Will could get close enough to nick a main artery. Even if Hannibal fought back, he would be on the floor within seconds, Bedelia thinks.
The fantasy shatters abruptly when Will simply walks up behind Hannibal, and settles into the curve of Hannibal’s back. He tilts his head to the side and presses his mouth against the nape of Hannibal’s neck, and then wraps one arm around his waist. It’s so casual, so intimate that Bedelia feels like she shouldn’t look at all. Will watches the food Hannibal is cooking on the stove top from over the curve of Hannibal’s shoulder.
Bedelia takes another gulp of her drink. Of course she had assumed all along, but she had never truly known.
In the kitchen, Will’s mouth moves, saying something that Bedelia isn’t privy to hear. He presses his cheek to Hannibal’s shoulder like she would press her lips to someone else’s in a kiss, and then pulls away from Hannibal, moving to walk away.
He’s barely a step outside of Hannibal’s radius when Hannibal reaches an arm back without looking away from the pan, and slides his arm around Will’s waist. Will stops moving immediately. It’s strange, to see a human react so instantly to mere touch.
Hannibal pulls him back in easily, leaving his arm loose around Will’s waist as Will rests against his side in return, head tilted against his chest. Like it’s something new, to stand with one another like this. A familiar touch, but new again. Hannibal’s other hand never stops moving as he flips the contents of the pan with a flick of the wrist, and sets it back on the burner.
The arm that Hannibal has around Will’s torso loosens as his hand begins to move instead, sliding beneath the bottom hem of Will’s shirt and back out again. They’re dressed similarly but not the same; Will is wearing a black t-shirt and grey trousers, a compliment to Hannibal’s. Bedelia can practically see the brand label of Will’s t-shirt from here as Hannibal’s palm continues to pet Will’s flanks, pushing his t-shirt up until Bedelia can see the curve of Will’s lower back, the indents that lead down into his pants.
She can’t help but look away then. Hannibal never afforded her that kind of casual intimacy. With Hannibal, it had been controlled, a perfectly formed vision of what it might have looked like to live behind the veil. It was the touch of someone who studied French film and American families; a fictional rendering of what it might mean to be a human in love. Their relationship had been the equivalent of a controlled demolition site.
Where do you go when you know that the walls are about to crash down around you, Bedelia wonders. She has distant memories of packing luggage and wandering Paris alone; Will had been the only one stupid enough to run back into the house mere moments away from detonation.
It’s that moment that Bedelia realizes the only person who has ever successfully penetrated Hannibal’s outer layer - whether it was on purpose, by choice, or not at all - is Will. Will, standing in her kitchen, in Hannibal’s embrace, watching him cook the flesh and bone that they bodily removed from her only hours ago.
She watches, open mouthed, as Will turns and smiles. It’s that strange, sharp pulse of a smile that he only ever reserved for Hannibal. Then Bedelia watches him walk away, back to the opposite counter, like it was just that easy.
Hannibal’s trailing gaze is what snaps her out of the fog. Even from here, she can see the way the corner of his mouth lilts up, lips twisted up into what anyone else might consider a real smile.
She reaches for her drink again. For some reason, this has been the worst part of it all.
~
They’d set the table while Bedelia had still been unconscious, using her most expensive linens, her crystal wine glasses and family bone china.
Hannibal brings out a tray of oysters first, as Bedelia is winding her fingers around the fork she managed to nose off of her place setting while they were preoccupied in the kitchen. Hannibal has that familiar self congratulatory smirk on his face, head held high as he places the tray just to the left of her plate.
“You will have to indulge me for a moment,” He says, sounding almost apologetic as he reaches for the wine bottle to top up her glass. “I must excuse myself to change. Will is completing our entrée, a black truffle dish that will be served over burnt cream. He will likely get to you before I do.”
She looks up into his face for lack of anything to say, and is surprised to see him watching her, still, his dark eyes careful. Look the devil in the eye, she muses, as he finally takes pity on her and loosens her wrist restraints enough that she can reach for her wine glass. Bedelia pretends not to notice the marks on Hannibal’s skin as he bends over her; particularly the fresh, deep looking bite mark on his throat.
Instead she looks away demurely, and finally raises the wine glass to her mouth.
As Hannibal leaves the dining room, she watches his figure retreat, and presses the soft pad of her thumb against the dulled fork tines.
~
Will does, in fact, join her before Hannibal does.
He’s changed into a navy blue smoking jacket and slacks, looking positively charmed with himself as he takes a seat to her right, leaving the head of the table open for Hannibal. Two pets, Bedelia thinks to herself, pulsing a tight smile as he grins at her sharply, though only one of us would be considered the prize.
Hannibal has indeed trained Will to sit and stay, though it is obvious Will understands the implication of his place at Hannibal’s feet.
“So, Will,” She begins to say, modulating her voice until she sounds like her old self, positively unafraid in the frosty morning light that so often streamed through her office windows. She licks her lips softly, and steels herself before asking, “How is your wife?”
She doesn’t know what reaction she was expecting - maybe just a flicker of emotion on Molly’s behalf would have sufficed - but she isn’t surprised when Will raises his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth twisting into what could be mistaken for a smile as he reaches for his own glass, full of wine that Hannibal poured from him before leaving to dress.
“I assume she is doing much better now,” He says, carefully, looking at Bedelia over the rim of his wine glass. His eyes say try me, bitch. Bedelia will. “She’s been placed in witness protection. The new place is only a few minutes away from FBI headquarters, believe it or not.”
The implication of that statement hits her like a punch in the gut. She thinks of Molly, a woman she never met, completely unaware of the spiderweb she had been walking into when she married Will Graham. Bedelia isn’t sure if that makes Hannibal the spider, or the man who knocks the web down with a broom.
“How is the wine,” Hannibal announces, as he strides back into the dining room.
Before he takes a seat in the armed antique chair that matches Bedelia’s own, he stoops behind Will’s chair to press a kiss against the crown of his head. Bedelia thinks about the metaphorical crown of thorns that weigh those curls down.
“It’s good,” Will replies, clipped. His gaze is still trained on Bedelia carefully.
Hannibal was clearly fishing for something more than an unenthusiastic ‘good.’ As he sits down, spreading his napkin over his lap, he frowns and glances over at Will to say, “We will have the Romanée-Conti next time.”
Bedelia clears her throat and drops her gaze to the plate in front of her.
“So, my dear Bedelia, what has been new in your life?” Hannibal asks, changing the subject as he reaches for the tray of oysters. He didn’t take the time to plate this meal as he usually does; instead, each dish is being served buffet style. Bedelia watches as Hannibal hands the oyster tray to Will, and reaches for the truffles over burnt cream. It’s clear her leg is the main course.
She straightens her shoulders against the back of the chair, and eyes the handful of acorns Hannibal had so thoughtfully placed on her plate earlier.
“Nothing of note,” She finally murmurs, reaching for her drink. The wine has already begun to take effect, making her body feel heavy alongside the drugs still coursing through her veins. “It suppose it is simply a good time to entertain two dear friends for dinner.”
This is the game that Hannibal wants to play, and she realizes it as soon as she sees the pulse of the smile he aims in her direction, mouth otherwise full of food.
They eat quietly for a short amount of time. Bedelia tries to calm her stomach as she watches them both eye one another, it’s clear they are almost done with the first course when Hannibal rises. Will settles back in his chair, wine glass held lazily in one hand as he watches Hannibal remove his suit jacket. Hannibal hangs it over the back of his chair before rolling his shirt up his forearms, and reaching for the carving knife that had so lovingly been placed alongside the tray.
“Bedelia,” Hannibal says. It makes her jump; she hadn’t realized she had been falling asleep, chin slowly dropping down to her own chest, until she hears the sharp tone in Hannibal’s voice. When she looks up at him, Hannibal looks back at her fondly. “Shall I cut you a piece of thigh, or do you prefer the gamey flavor of the calf? It is practically falling off the bone.”
Despite herself, she feels her gag reflex trigger at Hannibal’s question. Bedelia presses the back of her hand against her mouth and swallows compulsively, closing her eyes for a moment to regain her composure.
“I’m just fine with another glass of wine, thank you,” She finally manages, though her eyes are still closed.
Hannibal tisks, and she hears the sound of the blade being sharpened.
“I must insist you try the main course, my dear,” He replies. When Bedelia opens her eyes, he’s begun to sink the blade into the top half of her cooked leg, where her thigh used to be muscular and soft to the touch. “You are our guest of honor, after all.”
She keeps her mouth shut, after that. Hannibal serves her a piece of meat, placing it against the fine bone china plate reverently.
“And what would you prefer, my darling boy?” Hannibal asks Will, as Bedelia struggles to look at the small piece of meat Hannibal has laid before her.
Will makes a noise like he can’t decide, and then leans forward to answer, “The calf. I’ve never had it before.”
“You will love it,” Hannibal announces proudly, as he sinks his blade into the meat to cut a prime piece for Will.
As always, Hannibal serves himself last and surveys the table as he slides back into his chair. Bedelia hasn’t managed to will herself to even look at her dinner plate yet, and it seems that Will is waiting for Hannibal before he begins.
She can’t help but watch as Hannibal carefully slides his knife and fork into the meat, cutting a small chunk from his serving before he raises it to his mouth. The meat disappears, and the fork slides against Hannibal’s bottom lip as he closes his eyes and chews thoughtfully. She’d been so busy watching Hannibal that she hadn’t even realized Will started until she glances over and catches him cutting another small piece from his plate.
“It is quite delicate,” Hannibal says after a few moments of silence.
Bedelia can’t bring herself to lift a bite to her mouth. And although Hannibal and Will are both psychotic, strange men, neither of them forces her to eat what she does not want.
Unfortunately, she realizes, she has made greater sacrifices tonight.
~
After dinner, Hannibal stands up and walks behind her chair.
He leans down, until he’s so close to Bedelia she shivers, and whispers in her ear, “And what will be done about you, my lovely wife?”
As soon as Hannibal says the words, Bedelia’s gaze snaps to Will as though a wire were attached to her eyeballs. The flash of heat that sparks across his face is obvious, like fireworks in the dead of the night, and it’s only then that she realizes they are both using her as a game - a lowly pawn piece between the two of them in this cat and mouse game they have set up.
Bedelia can practically see the words ‘my lovely wife’ bouncing around Will’s head, getting stuck like a piece of bubblegum to a shoe.
She reaches up to place her hand on top of his, still wrapped around her shoulder, and murmurs, “Thank you for dinner. It was wonderful.”
“I am glad you enjoyed it,” Hannibal replies, twisting their fingers together before he lets go of her completely.
When she looks back at Will, his gaze angled towards the ceiling, she realizes they’re watching one another over the top of her head.
“Hannibal,” Will says, and there are so many things that are hidden in his tone that Bedelia doesn’t know if she’d ever have the resources to pick it all apart.
Whatever it is contained there, it brings a smirk to Hannibal’s face as he moves around the table, back to his own seat. He watches Bedelia as he reaches down to pick the suit jacket back up from his chair, and carefully slides one arm into it, and then the other.
“We must bid you an early adieu, I am afraid,” Hannibal says, as Will drinks the last mouthful of wine in his glass. Hannibal’s has been empty since they polished the bottle off halfway through the meal. His face softens momentarily, almost as though there is a human back there after all, before he says, voice tender, “My darling Bedelia, I do hope we will see one another again.”
Licking her lips, Bedelia gets her throat working long enough to ask, “Where will you go?”
“Everywhere and nowhere at once,” Hannibal smiles. To her, it sounds like Florence, Naples, and Athens.
There are so many things that she knows Hannibal wants to show Will, and they neither begin nor end on a dinner table.
She nods, lips pursed, and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, only minutes later, they are gone. If it wasn’t for the two place settings on her dining table, it would almost be like they were never here at all.
Bedelia drains the last mouthful of wine in her glass, and sets her fork back on the table.
Although she knew the fork could barely fend off a child, much less a practiced, iron-fisted man like Hannibal, the thought of sticking it into the side of his throat had made her smile.
*
our honeymoon
say you want me too