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Under the dim, early-winter dawn, a dense fog hung low and oppressive over the clearing. Ice and gravel crunched under Will’s boots - the only sound for miles other than the raucous barks and howls of her dogs.
Will watched the dogs - all seven of them - with a lazy eye as they bounded through the field surrounding her home: to the tree line and back, through the underbrush and back, over and over in an endless spiral of energy.
It seemed that a grimace had made permanent residence on her face; her shoulders constantly raised as if to flee. The turmoil in her mind made permanent residence in her body, agitating injuries new and old.
With great effort and little success, Will attempted to focus the swirling eddies of her consciousness on the bitter taste of the coffee clasped between her work-rough hands. The dim tones of her surroundings were little more than a blank canvas on which her mind replayed flashes of her dream from the night before.
She squinted as if it could blind her to her own thoughts.
Will forced another acrid mouthful of scorching coffee down, trying to think about something - anything - else: Buster’s shuffling pawprints in the snowfall, the crisp chill in the air that promised more snow soon.
But Will’d always had a damnably good imagination and a stubborn memory; the phantasmic sense-memory from the night before fanned over her skin like flames, heating her from the inside like a good scotch.
She drained her cup, sitting the chipped porcelain on the porch’s banister behind her. Desire dripped syrup-slow down through her subconscious: the only sweetness Will’s body could bear.
Want was a familiar acquaintance; Will was full of desire - primarily for things she knew she could never have. A life of denial had taught her to hold with an open hand, to anticipate loss as armor against it.
Up until her return to field work, her solitary lifestyle of asceticism was simply the path of least resistance.
Will inhaled deeply, holding the wild air in for several counts before releasing, absentmindedly tracing the fog of her breath as it drifted away from her. She’d missed the calmness of the outdoors while incarcerated at the BSHCI; the chained block of concrete and worn scrub grass could never have compared to the sprawling openness of her slice of Wolf Trap.
It was strange, having to readjust to the freedom she’d once enjoyed unthinkingly. The worn weave of her jeans kept surprising her every time she reached into her pockets; the soft touch of her flannels was juxtaposed over the starched canvas of the prison-grade jumpsuits that chafed in her memory.
The earthy hues of her wardrobe now felt alien: camouflage out of season. Even the dip in her mattress felt an inch off-centered, formed to a self that Will no longer occupied. Will was haunting herself in lock step with the ghost of Hobbs.
Abigail, though, stayed far from her - even in her dreams. Will could trace her absence like a pulled tooth. The only memory of Abigail not lost to her was the sensation of the girl’s severed ear in her mouth, copper-bitter and obstructive.
Will knew (now) that she hadn’t killed Abigail. She felt no less culpable.
Truthfully, Will wished she could say that her nightmares stayed at the BSHCI, had disappeared along with the inflammation in her brain - but they’d just metamorphosized.
Wrath made her obsessive. Her thoughts bubbled with vitriol, every waking moment a new chance to dissect every interaction with her; every hint Will had missed, every mock-innocent smile that should have clued Will in.
With no new cases from Jack for her to wrap her mind around, Will’s psyche had fixated on her one interest with reckless abandon.
In her mind’s eye, Hannibal stared down at Will, dark-eyed and fathomless; Hannibal gave her sidelong glances fit to burst with unspoken confessions; she offered half-truths in the face of Will’s earthshattering terror.
She laid Will on the chopping block like nothing more than a particularly interesting sacrificial lamb.
And still - and still. Will ground her heel into the earth below, desperate to anchor herself against the tidal pull of her thoughts. She clenched her fists until her knuckles went bloodless, banging them into the railing behind her once, twice - completely unaware of her mug shattering to the porch below.
If she was honest with herself - something that Will didn’t make much of a habit of - it was the perversity of it all which made her current state so maddening. Hannibal shook the foundations of Will’s self; what little self concept wasn’t unraveled by the ‘good’ doctor was called into question by Will’s own response to her.
Will didn’t care about seeing justice done - not in the legal sense.
She needed to see Hannibal brought low. Unsure and grasping, unmoored and frantic like when Will’s mind was on fire; subject to her whims just like Will had been for the better part of the last year.
Her dream from the night before rose up unbidden, sweeping away Will’s better sense. She let her body slump, reclining against the house’s sturdy frame.
As her eyes closed, shades of cold darkened into the moody hues of Hannibal’s office. What little sky was visible between the gaps in the curtains was dark with an oncoming storm.
The room always held a particular quiet that reminded Will of funerals.
Conversation flowed between them as it always did - less an exchange of ideas and more a duel. Feint, parry, riposte: again and again in a match that should have been called many moves ago. Will had never been an excellent conversationalist (too vague or specific in all the wrong moments, too focused on the finer detail of things), but Hannibal had always managed to coax Will’s thoughts into the open.
The specifics of the conversation didn’t matter. Will’s fantasy could be transposed onto any of the sessions they’d had since her acquittal. A glass of wine or two shared between them: not enough to loosen tongues or spines but just enough to tease at the possibility of more honest selves. Hannibal was never expressive, but even she couldn’t stop the march of heat that alcohol brought to the face.
In the privacy of her thoughts, Will could admit that it was a good look for the older woman. The only other time she could remember seeing a disturbance of Hannibal’s placid demeanour was after she killed Tobias Budge.
(Knowing what Will knew now, it made sense that murder would be the thing to bring life to Hannibal’s face.)
Will had imagined it a hundred times in a hundred ways: over the arm of the chair, on the ladder, on the floor like animals or on the pretentious chaise lounge, hurried like either of them gave a damn about propriety and slow like they weren’t on the precipice of mutually assured destruction.
Recently, she’d been weighing the merits of unpinning Hannibal’s meticulous updo to wrap the strands of ash blonde hair around her fist and pull.
Her dream self indulged this desire.
The challenging set of Hannibal’s thin lips and haughty shadow of her brow would be tempered by the swell of her pupil and the flutter of pale lashes; Will wanted to know how far she’d have to pull to see pain or pleasure surface on Hannibal’s face.
She loomed above Hannibal, the closeness less an invasion of space and more the consequence of their decaying orbit. Will pressed stockinged thighs apart with a hard knee, all to the end of being closer. She brought their faces together, not to kiss but to breathe in the juniper-ash scent that hung close to Hannibal’s skin.
If she got close enough, maybe she would see the seams of Hannibal’s person-suit.
Part of her wanted to tug that thread until the terrible creature inside was exposed - but the part of her that indulged her own desires wanted to hoard it for herself until Hannibal was hers - to guard or destroy. She didn’t let her gaze catch on Hannibal’s, eyes too busy roaming over exposed slips of skin, each wrinkle and freckle evidence that Hannibal was just as human as Will.
Will would pull Hannibal up by her lapels;
She expected the other woman to be deceptively heavy, each cut and pattern of clothing selected to conceal the bulk of muscle necessary for hauling around dead bodies in one’s free time. Still, Will - used to hauling around uncooperative strays and boat motors - had no problem pushing Hannibal across the room until they hit the edge of Hannibal’s desk. Papers had scattered at the force of the impact: another chip in Hannibal’s carefully artificed composure.
Will flipped the other woman, sending more papers tumbling to the floor and forcing her face-down on the wood with a rough hand to the center of Hannibal’s back. She was glad for the huff of air forced out of the woman below her; it masked Will’s own answering sigh.
Undoubtedly, Hannibal would have something provocative to say.
“I see you’ve been visited by Dante’s Erinyes. Tell me, Will, do you fancy yourself as Tisiphone, here to punish me for my crimes? I admit, your chosen method is - ah - fascinating.”
The obscure reference sent Will’s temper flaring, even though the limits of her dream meant that Hannibal’s allusions were confined by nature to Will’s own understanding.
Dream Will, uninhibited by conscience, replied by knocking Hannibal’s legs apart and pushing her further up the desk, making her strain to stay moored. Smooth, leather soles of burgundy pumps barely grazed the floor. With her left hand, Will pulled Hannibal’s jacket halfway down her arms, trapping them at the small of her back.
She worked her right hand under Hannibal’s skirt, rucking up the fabric enough to get access to what she was after. She’d been hoping for cause to tear Hannibal’s hose, but was only-half surprised to find garters holding up the woman’s stockings instead. The unreal serendipity of her fantasy spared her from the embarrassing comment her waking self would have surely made in lieu of peevishly snapping a garter instead.
Even in her dream, the shape of Hannibal’s reply ran dark and silken down her spine, causing Will to grind her hips forward, crushing Hannibal tight against the heavy desk. She felt sick with rage at the sway Hannibal (her words, her voice) had over her even in her own head.
The fantasy was less centered around the particulars of sex than on the heady feeling of Hannibal submitting to her will. And yet - somewhere between the comfort of Hannibal’s guiding hand and the brutality Will was still discovering in the recesses of her memory - the threads of Will’s desires had tangled beyond separation.
For Will, to hate Hannibal was to need her. To need to be under her skin, close to the creature only she could see.
She could still feel the sensation of it all, how Hannibal’s body had yielded under her hands in the way her mind never would. The give of taut flesh under her teeth, the wet slide between thighs that revealed Hannibal was enjoying this just as much as Will would, though she would never say so directly.
Words had never been reliable allies to Will: human connection treacherous. But with sex, even Will could read desire in the muffled crescendo of Hannibal’s ragged breaths and the half-controlled cant of her hips.
Afterward, she’d pulled Hannibal from the table: both of them unsteady. Hesitant to touch now that she’d been so close, Will half-apologetically helped the older woman out of her coat, watching with guarded interest as Hannibal worked feeling back into stiff shoulders and joints.
An unexpected hand to her belt pinned Will to the edge of the desk like a lab specimen. The weight of Hannibal’s ruddy gaze as she dropped to kneel at Will’s feet sent the air from the room: Will’s world condensed to this moment.
Even debauched, Will couldn’t imagine Hannibal as anything but damnably regal. Her sparse, blonde lashes caught the light from the fire: animal-bright eyes crinkled at the corners in mirth.
“Is this what you wanted, Will?” Nimble fingers tangled in the beltloops of Will’s worn Wranglers while malicious teeth scraped the sensitive inner part of her knee through the denim.
The earth shifted below her. Any control she’d wrested back fled from her. A bitter laugh escaped the tightness of her throat. “I never wanted - this.” The blood, the death. The intoxicating feeling of seeing the scars on Hannibal’s wrists and knowing she’d made them happen.
Will couldn’t force her eyes to meet Hannibal’s - even as her skittish gaze caught the smirk that twisted Hannibal’s cruel mouth.
“You must forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
Hannibal, now kneeling eye level to Will’s belt buckle, had let her hands roam freely: up the seams of Will’s trousers, down the curve of her spine where sweat had Will’s flannel stuck to the small of her back.
A vicious smile now, faint like the afterimage of lightning on the night sky. A flash: she’d imagined Hannibal covered in blood. The rustling of cloth and leather as Hannibal slowly, slowly worked her belt open.
Will turned her face away, knuckles white with the force of her grip on the desk behind her as if it’d disappear at any moment and send her sprawling into free fall. “I’m not, I’m not -” she struggled to find the words as Hannibal pushed her shirt up, nosing along Will’s bare stomach with hot, soft breaths that caused Will to jolt. In the mouth of the beast. “I’m not like you.”
A spiteful bite to the hip in sync with deft hands working her fly open. An imperious quirk of Hannibal’s brow, when Will finally forced herself to look.
“Aren’t you?”
Cradled now, between the hands and jaw that had killed untold numbers. Swallowed by limitless appetite. Want, burning the back of her throat like bile as she came apart under Hannibal's will again -
It was only the crunch of gravel and eager barks of her dogs around her that prevented Will from having to make her particular mental confession a second time.