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It’s beautiful, watching him. Will looks completely feral, engulfed and dripping and eyes wide with a wild admiration for his hands’ actions.
They consummate their relationship through killing the dragon, and when Will lays his head on Hannibal’s chest, Hannibal feels at peace. He then feels a tug, and together they tumble off the cliff and into the ocean. Will nuzzles his face farther into Hannibal’s neck on the way down, pressing a kiss there just before they hit the water.
__________
Will still isn’t sure how they survived. He’d meant them to die.
There was a part of him, the part that pushed, that was tired, and wanted an end. Wanted closure in a just way. Hannibal shouldn’t be allowed to live, Hannibal is not good for this world, but Will can not live without him.
The only logical conclusion was to die with him. And that was fine. Will had always reeled at his instincts and his desires so maybe he deserved to die too. But by some miracle, or cruel twist of fate, depending on who you ask, they’re both alive. And, maybe, that’s just fine, too. Looking back, Will realizes a much larger part of him hadn’t truly cared about the outcome. It only cared that they were together.
And they are, and now they always will be.
Will would smile, but there are stitches in his cheek, so he settles for leaning his forehead against Hannibal’s, twisting his hands into his shoulders, and breathing deep.
__________
Bedelia’s mind is in a fog. She’s used to this fog, and it’s pleasant and soft, but still, it does not prevent her from being fully aware of her surroundings.
The table she is at is beautiful, and set for three. She tries to move her leg, but then remembers it is no longer attached to her body, but steaming on a platter in front of her.
Soft conversation floats towards her from the adjoining room, adoration carried without specific words, and then there are footsteps. They’re slow - their owners are injured, but recovering. There’s the scraping of chairs and Bedelia lolls her head to the side. She watches Will sit gracefully, covering his lap with a napkin.
There’s a healing gash on his cheek, and it makes his satisfied, sinister smile a bit weak on that side. Nerves must have been damaged.
Bedelia smiles at the thought. The dragon fought well, and had left that pretty face with a permanent memory.
Hannibal puts his hands on Bedelia’s shoulders, whispers a salutation in a positively giddy tone. This is what he always planned for her. And what an honor to Will, that their first victim together is one that means so much to Hannibal.
Hannibal serves her, with a flourish, serves Will, and drags his hand across Will’s shoulders and neck on his way to the head of the table. Bedelia watches Will lean heavily into the touch and scoffs.
There’s no point in being polite now, with her body on this table and on her plate. She takes a sip from her wine.
“Frankenstein’s bride has finally come home,” she says in somewhat slurred speech.
Hannibal smiles at Will. “Truly a cause for celebration.”
Will pointedly takes a bite of Bedelia, much too smug for her liking.
___________
Alana watches the news with Margot, and ice fills her stomach. It’s not unexpected, in fact it’s why they had left so quickly, but it is frightening, as well as depressing.
She’d played a part in this; the dragon is dead, and Will might as well be too. At least, the Will she used to know.
Alana realizes that the Will she had known was just a suppressed, sad version of the real thing.
Margot clutches her hand, tight. She’s also afraid. Alana resigns herself to a life on the run with a shuddering breath.
It will be a much less exhilarating life than that of the two they will be running from.
___________
Molly sells her ring to a jeweler and tries not to cry. The jeweler looks at her with a sympathetic face, and Molly makes it to her car before she stops being able to breathe. She sits there, numb, with tears streaming down her face.
They’re moving tomorrow, away from here. Wally will start a new school where no one knows who his mother was married to. She’s not sure what they’re going to do with the dogs, but the apartment she’s renting until she can find somewhere better will not take them.
Wally barely speaks to her, barely speaks to anyone, and she’s not sure what to do. There’s no explanation she can give, no comforting words, no way around any of it because she’s not sure what to do with the information herself.
Jack had given the news, in person. He had at least that much decency.
“Will…. is no longer here,” he’d started with.
Her Will, her sweet man, is gone. Replaced by a monster Molly is scared to admit she recognizes. It had always been there, underneath, and beyond sadness Molly feels anger. At herself, at Jack.
Not at Will.
He’d fought who he was for so long. She couldn’t blame him anymore than she could blame a spider for being a spider. Will is like a spider. He’d keep out of your way, until you pushed him too far. And his bite is nasty.
She feels his venom in her bones.
No, she is not mad at Will. She’s not even sure she is angry with Hannibal. Disgusted by him, in the highest degree a human could hold disgust, certainly. But not angry. However, if she ever saw Jack Crawford again, she would punch his lights out. He held all the blame in her mind.
She knows he will lose sleep over the deaths he’s caused, and she’s glad for it.
___________
Jack can’t sleep at all. He’s not sure why he didn’t see straight through Will’s request to fake freeing Hannibal Lecter in order to catch Francis Dolarhyde, but he didn’t and now it’s too late.
He’d become too consumed with catching the dragon to see the lamb orchestrating destruction right under his nose. The same destruction Hannibal had warned him about. At the time, he’d thought it was only wishful thinking on Hannibal’s part.
Jack knows that Will and Hannibal are the worst kind of poison for each other. He just hadn’t considered, before now, that, maybe, they welcome the toxicity. Maybe they aren’t even poison at all. Maybe they are some sort of medicine.
Either way, Jack had brought them together, again, after everything that had happened before. Will had said it himself, several years ago, in his garage, while fixing a boat:
“Part of me wanted to go with him.”
Time doesn’t erase everything, it didn’t erase that, and it will not erase this. Jack will have to live with it for the rest of his life. He’s not certain how long that will be, at this rate.
Either he will die by their hands, or he will die worn out and alone, trying desperately to catch them.
He will run through a river of blood, and it will be his footprints the world will track. He is not the killer, but he opened the cage.
Jack takes a swig of whiskey. The dragon may have been slain, but two new beasts roam the earth, and Jack is the one who’s clipped their chains.
____________
Hannibal shows Will a multitude of cities, and in each, they wreak their silent havok. Will tells him it’s beautiful, and he means it. He tells Hannibal he loves him, and he means that too.
Will had said, after they’d washed ashore due to his poetic, albeit stupidly heroic, way to end everything, that the moment they’d stood together on that cliff, Will felt he was home.
“I was coming home, again. I was coming home and I… I had missed it. More than anything. And I didn’t want to let it go, not - never again.”
“You never have to, Will,” Hannibal had said in return, and Will had fallen back, gasping a laugh, the most genuinely happy sound Hannibal had heard Will make in a long while. There had been a sad, guilty edge to it that faded as soon as Hannibal had dragged himself over and stroked the uninjured side of his face, laced his fingers through his left hand.
Will noticed, then, that he’d lost his wedding band, and he laughed harder.
Hannibal holds that same left hand now, in South America, and prides himself that there would never be any rings on that hand again, unless, of course, sentiment got the better of him.
Sentiment is easy around Will. It’s not something Hannibal ever thought he would be partial to, but Will unlocked something in him, just as he had unlocked something in Will.
It’s rare, for two people to connect so wholly, to know each other as completely as they do. They are truly alive together. As far as Hannibal is concerned, a life without Will in the near vicinity has become utterly pointless - a mere shadow of what could be.
Hannibal watches Will buy fruit from a vendor, happy and charming, and Hannibal smiles. They could grow old, him and Will, or they could die in the next month. Whenever they meet their end, it does not matter, because it will be together. There is no other state in which they could exist, no other possibility.
They will walk this earth as a single, powerful unit, and the world will quake from their steps.