Chapter Text
A normal relationship might have been marked by a series of conversations and shared experiences, a collection of vignettes both significant and mundane that pieced together the chassis of a bond. When Will considered the knotted framework of his history with Hannibal Lecter, he instead recalled those markers as meals. A sordid menu of splintered bone and ragged flesh. But then...that was to be expected, for Will hadn’t been afforded the luxury of a normal life.
“The moon...is it full?” Abigail wondered, her pale face turned up toward the light of it.
“Tomorrow,” Will replied gruffly, not daring to gaze up at it. Instead he looked only at it’s cast upon her face and what little of her neck was uncovered by the scarf she wore. Of course, it was just as dangerous to pay consideration to the fragile column of her throat.
“Is it safe for you to be out like this?” she asked, looking at him curiously, without fear.
Fear had been bled from her long before now. From both of them.
“No,” he told her honestly and was sure his eyes would be catching the light were he not wearing his glasses. Reflecting a warning to his prey that all was not as it should be. “But the moon makes little difference at this point.”
She hummed in answer and turned her too knowing gaze to the moonlit architecture instead, the darkened streets a subdued hush about them. The city was a curious amalgam of its storied history; a fusion of aesthetics left behind by conquering nations, interspersed with an assault of modern concrete. Careful restorations of architecture far older than their country of origin neighbored hastily salvaged ruins and the eclectic blend of Sicilian, Byzantine, Baroque, Norman and Arabic styles made the city feel both chaotic and elegant.
Little wonder that Hannibal had found it so compelling.
“I read Palermo’s supposed to have been the most conquered city in the world, but I’m pretty sure it will still be here in the morning.”
“That’s what you think,” Will replied and smiled very slightly when this elicited a laugh. “I just...need to see it tonight. I don’t want to wait.”
A sympathetic fondness came to her wide, blue eyes, one that Will could feel , though he refused to look at her. “Do you think that he’ll be there?”
He didn’t, not really, not after all this time. But some part of Will hoped that he would, which was far worse. “You don’t have to come with me.”
“You know that isn’t true,” she told him gently and though there was a stark candor in her tone, it was not unkind. They walked in silence for another block before she spoke again, her tone lighter. “An American werewolf in Sicily… What do you want to bet that will be the title Freddie uses if she finds out you’re here?”
A low growl rumbled in Will’s chest at the thought of Freddie Lounds, though he was privately glad for the change in subject. “Are you trying to incite violence?”
Grinning impishly, Abigail laughed again and gave him a teasing, knowing look as they walked along the promenade, the Palazzo dei Normanni looming higher as they neared. The spotlights illuminating the facade made it seem somehow unreal, as though it were some elaborate prop erected solely as a backdrop to their foolhardy quest. And it was foolhardy, for there was nothing sensible about their being here now.
“There’s security,” Abigail pointed out as they stopped just outside beyond the well lit courtyard, nodding toward a uniformed man idly walking the perimeter. She needn’t have bothered. Will could hear the man, along with several others, and the beat of their hearts was horrifically enticing. “Do you think they’ll have cameras? Alarms? Laser traps?”
“You’ve watched too many movies. They may still use the palace for Parliament, but it’s a historical site.”
“You’ve watched too few. Can I say that we’re casing the joint? We are, aren’t we? You’re going to break in there.” Will glanced at her, but didn’t answer right away, long enough for her to make up her mind. “I’m going to look inside.”
“Abigail!” Will hissed, but didn’t follow when she jogged fearlessly across the courtyard. Looking back at him as she reached one of the doors, Abigail gave him a cheeky wave, then vanished straight through it. “Dammit.”
At least there was one advantage to being a ghost.
Hands fisting at his sides, Will shoved them into his pockets and wisely continued on his walk, knowing Abigail would catch up to him when she was through. Even if someone had enough metaphysical awareness to see her, they’d hardly raise a fuss. Cities old as this were filled with the dead.
Will, on the other hand, would be arrested and aggressively deported if he were caught. A man walking alone in the middle of the night was one thing, but standing there glaring at a foreign Parliament was beyond careless for a human , much less a werewolf who’d entered the country illegally. He wasn’t even certain what rights non-humans had in Sicily. Western European governments were typically known to be more accepting of non-humans, particularly weres, but Vatican City was less than three hundred miles away.
The Catholic Church was hardly a beacon of tolerance.
Will hardly remembered a time when he didn’t have to take such things into consideration, having been a werewolf for the last twelve years. Ever since he’d been bitten in the backstreets of New Orleans while investigating a noise complaint. Well…’bitten’ was the word the social worker had used a week later when he’d roused from an induced coma to find himself chained to a hospital bed. In truth, the feral wolf who turned him had nearly severed his right arm at the socket as it savaged him. He’d only survived because his partner shot it, sparking the creature’s ire. When their backup arrived, Will had been taken to the hospital, his partner to the morgue.
The Other World, as the media coined it, had only been public for a decade by that point, forcibly outed in a bizarre turn by the Democratic hopeful for the Louisiana Senate. What began as national outcry turned quickly to a subdued wave of support after the two hundred and seventy year old vampire was slain weeks later on live television, sparking the first wave of non-human legislation. The rest of the world had been slow to follow, or to even admit the existence of the Other World, until the Eastern Bloc inexplicably acknowledged the presence of non-humans three years later. From there it spread like wildfire, for good or ill.
By the time Will had to register as a non-human, he had no need to concern himself with his rights to property or access to healthcare, but he could no longer serve as a member of the NOPD. He used his severance and the meager government stipend from his unwilling transformation to go back to school, and by the time he’d graduated, the FBI had finalized their new, ‘inclusive’ employment criteria. A non-human would never rise beyond Special Agent, but at least Will’s life had finally started to feel like it was getting back on track.
Until Jack Crawford inserted Hannibal Lecter into it.
“He wasn’t there,” Abigail reported a short while later when she’d caught up to him. Her hair was pulled back now, revealing a ruined mound of scar tissue where her left ear should have been. Will had learned that it usually manifested this way whenever she was thinking about Hannibal.
“He has no reason to be,” Will replied gruffly. “How was it?”
“The chapel?” She considered her response before answering with a neutral, “It was pretty.”
Will took this to mean, ‘It was extravagant and excessively decadent, in direct contrast to what my Midwestern upbringing tells me a chapel should be,’ and snorted softly in amusement.
“I’m sure.”
“They open it for tours during the day. I found a pamphlet. We could go look for him then.”
“I’m not looking for him, Abigail,” Will sighed in frustration, feeling suddenly exhausted.
“So you just spent three weeks sailing across the Atlantic, alone, to sightsee with zero ulterior motive.”
“I like Italian food. And I wasn’t alone.”
“Ghosts don’t count. Why can’t you admit that we’re looking for Hannibal?”
“Because he didn’t want us!”
The shout was too loud in the quiet street, reverberating incriminatingly off stone and mortar as they both stopped to stare at one another. The words cut at them both and even as Will watched, Abigail’s appearance changed again, blood soaking onto her shirt the way it had on the night of her death. The night Will had killed her.
The scar on his abdomen felt tight to see her this way and he lowered his voice once more. “He’s known where we were, Abigail. For the last eight months he’s known exactly where to find us.”
“To find you , you mean,” she interjected, her voice small.
“To find us,” he insisted, stepping closer to her. “You told me he’d given you his blood, that he’d fed from you. If I...if I had trusted him, you would be alive.”
“Not in the strictest sense of the word.” She managed a slight smile that warmed as much as wounded for the forgiveness in it. “You tried to save me.”
“I ate you, Abigail.”
“Twice, even,” she teased, trying for levity, then sighed at the stricken look on his face. “Will, you tried to turn me as I was dying. You couldn’t have known that Hannibal had been trying to turn me, too.”
That was true, he couldn’t have known. Hadn’t even considered the possibility that Abigail was still alive before that moment. Yet as Hannibal left them bleeding on his kitchen floor, Will had pulled himself over to her with a single-minded determination not to lose her again. He’d never tried to force the change so desperately as he had in that moment, but in rousing his wolf, he’d lost control completely. By the time the police had arrived on scene, Will was completely feral, slipping in his blood and Abigail’s as he tried to claw his way into the pantry, to the feebly beating heart he could hear within. It had taken two tranquilizers to bring him down.
Lucky he’d gone for Jack instead of Alana.
Considering the damage that Will had withstood in his own turning, it was possible that Abigail might have similarly survived how he ravaged her...but not with vampiric blood already lying dormant within her. Even whole and healthy, no human had ever managed to survive the strain of housing two separate viruses from the Other World. Her frail human body, cut open and mauled as it was, had no chance. Hannibal and Will’s haphazard attempts to turn her had instead secured her death.
‘We’re her fathers now, Will.’
“I need to let you go,” Will whispered softly, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he was speaking to the ghost before him or the one in his mind.
“That isn’t how this works,” Abigail reminded him. “It’s about my unfinished business, not yours.”
“But you’re tied to me. I should be helping you.”
“I’m tied to you because you killed me, but do you really think I wouldn’t want to be here otherwise?” she asked incredulously. “Hannibal’s important to me , too. You both are.”
Will wished suddenly that he could hold her, though physical affection had never been his brand of care. “I’m glad you’re here,” he admitted softly instead and her face lit up.
“Good. Come on...we should go back to the boat. You’ll need some rest if we’re going back in the morning.”
He nodded, though Will doubted he’d be doing much sleep. His dreams were haunted even more than his waking hours, and by far less pleasant company. They returned to the marina on the seedier side of town, one where pockets could be padded in place of papers presented. It was a gamble whether or not the Nola would remain unspoiled any time he stepped out of sight of her modest lines, but the risk he’d taken in flashing his eyes at the dock master on arrival appeared to have conveyed his message well enough. Pale in the moonlight, the Nola solemnly awaited their return, untouched in their absence.
Or maybe not.
Will’s steps slowed on the dock as he caught sight of a shape sitting on the deck, a small, squat shadow that he knew hadn’t been there before. Looking back at him questioning when he stopped altogether, Abigail followed his gaze and gasped softly when she saw what he’d been looking at.
“I’ll check it out,” she said softly, as though she might be overheard, and jogged soundlessly down the dock to the boat. She couldn’t cross even the small gap without the gangway in place - ghosts could not openly traverse moving water - but she leaned over to peer at it, her eyesight still bound within human limits. Looking back at Will, she waved him over with a nod. “I think it’s fine. It’s a bag…” She hesitated and her voice lifted an octave in hope. “I think it might be insulated.”
Hesitating for a moment longer, Will finally followed after her, his senses cast wide, though the world around him seemed to be coming in static now. Halting beside her, he cast his gaze about slowly, taking in the night with an analytical eye, though he knew he’d find nothing. Hannibal wouldn’t grant him the satisfaction, not when he could torture him a while longer. He leapt across the small gap to the deck and retrieved his gangway, laying it out for Abigail to come aboard before removing it again. Leaving it out would be an invitation.
Will had no intention of inviting a vampire onto his boat.
Though it meant he’d have to bribe the dock master again in the morning, Will removed his mooring lines and prepared to cast off, not giving the bag a second glance all the while. It was petty, petulant even, but Will refused to acknowledge its presence while Hannibal might be able to see him. What he wanted to do was kick the damn thing into the Mediterranean and be done with it, but...he couldn’t.
Abigail crouched beside the bag and watched him silently as he cautiously steered the boat out into the night, the sky and water merging into a dark void about them. Once they were far enough away for Will to be certain he was out of Hannibal’s view, he cut the engine and went to the bag, glaring at it in silent accusation. Though he’d known the vampire would be unable to board the Nola without his invitation, Will hadn’t anticipated that Hannibal might simply reach across and leave him a gift. Or a warning.
After eight months of silence between them, the gesture was infuriating in its volume.
“Will-“ Abigail began when her patience ran dry, but he cut her off.
“I know. Damn it, I know,” he growled in frustration and snatched up the bag.
Food or viscera? Unzipping it with as much irritation as he could muster at the mundane task, he flipped back the top to reveal a covered ceramic dish and a small thermos. Food. His nostrils flared as he breathed in the aroma of eggs and sausage; tepid, but not yet cold.
“A little protein scramble to start the day,” Will murmured darkly, swallowing when his mouth watered traitorously.
“He made you breakfast for dinner,” Abigail said fondly, peering into the bag with a smile.
Without a word, Will turned and stomped down into the cabin below, tossing the bag carelessly onto the small table before pulling off his jacket. Abigail peered down at him from the hatch, then sat herself on a stair, clasping her hands around her knees to watch him throw his tantrum.
“He gave you food...that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Most alphas would find it insulting,” Will snapped, not so much sitting down as slumping heavily into his seat. “An insinuation that they were incapable of producing their own meal.”
“You’re not most alphas,” she pointed out.
That was true. Will hadn’t even known about his secondary gender for nearly a year after being turned. When his social worker had come to explain his new status to him in the hospital, it had been to expound upon his rights as a non-human citizen and discuss the dangers now associated with the phases of the moon. This was because the development of secondary genders was the best and worst kept secret of the Other World.
A horrified Will had assumed that the change in how he perceived the rest of the world - inexplicably butting heads with some while subconsciously protecting others - was due to his newfound lycanthropy. Worse of all was how occasionally a scent would get him hard so hard he’d find himself rutting against the seam of his pants and how sometimes when he came, the base of his cock would swell grotesquely. Will had been on the verge of giving up his attempt at normalcy and dropping out of college when a wererat had confronted him one day after class, hissing, “Get some scent blockers, asshole!”
It had taken some time for Piotr, the rat, to believe Will’s ignorance, but once he’d realized that Will was genuinely clueless, he reluctantly explained it all to him. Alpha, beta and omega...the genders of the Other World. To those lucky enough to be Born as they were, it was simply a way of life, but to the Turned...it was a steep learning curve. Most of the Turned were fortunate in that it was rare for them to become anything other than beta, but Will’s life was predictable in its abnormality.
Suppressants and scent blockers had gotten him through the rest of his schooling without incident and Will lived as close to human as he could manage, ignoring all those parts that were not of the norm. And as if it were a game, Hannibal had slowly and thoroughly torn away all of his defenses.
“What do you suppose I would have been if I turned?” Abigail asked, watching as Will pulled out the dish and uncovered it to sniff at the contents. “Human?”
“No,” Will decided after a few moments. “Pork.”
She nodded idly, as though the very possibility that it might be human flesh weren’t reprehensible. “Maybe I would have been an alpha. Like you and Hannibal.”
“It isn’t inherited,” Will grumbled, jabbing at the scramble and shoving a forkful of egg and sausage into his mouth.
Tact was something he had come to wield as a weapon in learning from Hannibal, which is why he had no intention of telling Abigail that her will wasn’t strong enough to be an alpha. She was adept in her own brand of manipulation, but she bent too easily to a mind stronger than her own, adapting to ensure her survival above all else. Qualities that were textbook beta.
Then again...who in the Other World would have expected an alpha to be an empath?
“That bad?” Abigail asked quietly, watching Will as he angrily chewed over his food.
“It’s delicious,” he growled in consternation and took another bite.
The first meal Hannibal had ever prepared for him had been presented as an olive branch, one that tipped just far enough toward apologetic that Will hadn’t bothered to consider any ill intent. Even now, Will didn’t really believe that the ingredients of their first meal had been anything more than they appeared to be. Though Hannibal could, at times, favor the chaotic over the sensible, Will rather thought that flying human sausage links more than twelve hundred miles to prepare in a hotel kitchenette was a bit much. Even if Hannibal’s Minnesotan lodging had no doubt possessed significantly more stars and higher ratings than what Federal Travel Regulations had afforded Will.
The true intent of that meal, on the other hand, was another story altogether.
Whether whimsy or curiousity, Hannibal had decided to ingratiate himself to Will after their first fateful encounter and his first meal had been a direct reflection of that. It hardly surprised Will, well used to his unique brand of empathy being the unwilling focus of anyone with half an interest in the workings of the mind. He had, in fact, been completely willing to dismiss Hannibal as such...and suspected that indifference had been utterly intolerable to the man. ‘Man’ being a relative term.
Will had known Hannibal to be non-human from the moment he’d walked into Jack’s office, could sense the presence of another predator, but it had taken a little longer to realize that Jack did not. That, in fact, Jack had sought Hannibal Lecter’s aid after reaching the limit of his tolerance for Will’s true nature without realizing he’d be asking one non-human to discern the humanity of another. After the prejudices he’d faced in his own turning, Will never even considered outing the truth of Hannibal’s nature. At least, not until it was far too late.
In the end, if Hannibal’s first meal had been meant to curry favor, what did this reiteration imply?
The question lingered in Will’s mind as he toured the Norman Chapel the next day, after he’d surrendered another small portion of his savings to safely moor the Nola once more. Wisely, the man had not argued to raise the price, though Will would have paid regardless. With the full moon pulling at the wolf even now, he was sure his demeanor did not invite negotiation.
Even Abigail kept her banter to a minimum as they toured together, though she, at least, was in high spirits. It was clear enough that she still didn’t understand why he’d come, if not to see Hannibal. An acknowledgment so soon after their arrival, a gift no less, should have been welcome. Yet even now, standing in the foyer of Hannibal’s mind palace, Will wasn’t sure why he’d come.
A concerto of languages entangled in an assortment of timbre and tempo rang throughout the chapel’s interior and Will found himself glad for the limits of his linguistic comprehension. The babble of sound fell unheeded to the very back of his thoughts, blissfully unexamined. It made the interior seem quieter than it was, affording them their own measure of privacy among tourists both devout and ambivalent.
“Even living hand in hand with the Other World, so many still come here to feel closer to God,” Will murmured.
Abigail drew her eyes away from one of the mosaics to look at him curiously, more than willing to talk now that he’d broken the terse silence of his foul mood. “Do you feel closer to God?”
Will scoffed slightly in answer, not bothering to disguise his conversation with her. Houses of worship were one of the few places one could be seen talking to themselves without scrutiny. “God’s not who I came here to find.”
“Do you believe in God?” she pressed, sounding uncertain of her own stance. Will imagined the thought weighed heavy on her, faced as she was with the uncertainty of what awaited her when she finally moved on.
He shook his head slightly, no more concrete in his own beliefs at nearly twice her age. “What I believe is closer to science fiction than anything in the Bible.”
“It wasn’t that long ago that werewolves were considered science fiction,” she mused. “But I’m pretty sure I don’t remember any mention of them there.”
“The king of Babylon begs to differ.”
This amused Abigail and she smiled impishly as she returned to her study of the church and its occupants. The smile waned somewhat as she focused in on those praying about them and she cast her voice low, as though afraid of being overheard.
“We all know, but no one ever says,” she began, the frustration clear in her. “God won’t do a goddamned thing to answer anybody’s prayers.”
Will wondered what it was Abigail had once prayed for, whether she still did so even now. “I’m sure answering prayers can be complicated, otherwise He would do it all the time. God can’t save any of us because it’s inelegant.”
She gave him a doubtful look at this. “God allows bad things to happen because it’s...elegant.”
“More elegant than stopping the universe to prevent an earthquake, put out a fire, cure cancer. Elegance is more important than suffering,” Will said, bitterness creeping into his tone. “That's His design.”
“You talking about God or Hannibal?”
Scoffing, Will shook his head in wry amusement at the very idea. “Hannibal’s not God. Wouldn’t have any fun being God,” he pointed out. “ Defying God, now that’s his idea of a good time.” He gestured up toward the highest dome, his eyes drifting over the gilded murals of saints and apostles. “Nothing would thrill Hannibal more than to see this roof collapse mid-Mass. Packed pews, choir singing… He would just love it. And he thinks God would love it, too.”
Following his gaze, Abigail’s lips pursed slightly in displeasure. “If that’s the sort of God whose judgement I’ll be facing, I don’t know that I want to move on.” They sat for a while amid prayers and photographs before she asked, “Is it what you expected?”
“I’ll never fully know what to expect from Hannibal,” he admitted. “But this place is what he sees when he steps inside the frescoed walls of his own mind.”
“Do you feel closer to him here?”
Shaking his head, Will sighed softly. “This isn’t Hannibal, it’s just where he begins. Beyond this - far and complex, light and dark - is the vast structure of his mind. A thousand rooms...miles of corridors. Everything he remembers, wonderfully and fearfully constructed.”
“Is that why you had to see it? To get a glimpse inside Hannibal’s mind?” Abigail asked, her eyes sharp, but guileless. Her inquisitive mind was one of the first things that truly drew Will to her, beyond the simple paternal instincts that saving her had evoked. It also, at times, made him resent her.
“He spent long enough in mine,” he said, a defensive edge to the words still built from the months he had spent trying to convince his friends and colleagues of his innocence.
She leaned a little closer to Will as though in solidarity, though it only served to make him cold.