Work Text:
Évora, Portugal. 7:00 pm.
“Is that Egyptian blue?”
Bedelia lifts her gaze from the table as Hannibal walks back from the kitchen, dressing in hand. He sets it in front of her. She stops for a second trying to see what is inside but it first looks blue. Then green. Later yellow. And finally red. She tries to smell it but she sniffs lime, coffee, mayonnaise, chocolate. She closes her eyes. Knowing Hannibal it is probably vinaigrette.
When she opens her eyes Hannibal is next to her, politely waiting for an answer as he stares. At her. At her dress. Egyptian blue. She takes in herself slowly.
“I… I believe it is.”
“You look magnificent in it,” Hannibal disappears from her side. A beat later, he is behind her chair, pushing it in despite being all the way so now her breastbone is against the edge of the table. Even then she only gasps when he whispers, “Bella donna in blu.” And she only does it because she is trying to hide the fork in her hand but she keeps trembling; she can almost hear the clack the metal would do as it betrays her. Hannibal’s cold hands against her neck as she coughs her last gasp.
Will comes out of the kitchen, wine in hand and when he scoffs, she realizes she has not dropped the fork and Hannibal is now across the table.
“She looks like a lobotomized wife,” Only when he says that she notices her cheeks are aching. The whole time she has been smiling, Will has not smiled back. “Wine?”
He does not give her time to answer. Will is already pouring the wine in her cup. ¾. He wants her dead.
Hannibal and Will take their seats. Will to her right, Hannibal across from her. Once Will has filled Hannibal’s cup, Hannibal lifts it, “Cheers.” She does not drink from hers.
Eventually Hannibal grabs her leg from the center of the table and cuts it by following the curve of her femur, tracing the end of its length with the intention to go around it and get the first chunk. Then, he carves against her muscle fibers for thin slices. Her meat gives in with ease. The juice spills at the first poke, at the first edge. Hannibal does not want to waste her and when he pinches a slice Will is already lifting a plate. Not a drop of juice has fallen on the table cloth. Will passes it to her. The dish is, objectively, appetizing.
As she stares at it she can hear their words before they kidnapped her in a small alleyway of Évora, right after she had left the Bone Chapel. Because of course they had to get her after she had seen all those bones arranged in the most grotesque and artistic ways the human mind could conjure. Hey Bedelia! Hannibal was freshly showered, his skin shining as if he had just rubbed oil in it, and he was wearing slippers. Will, on the other hand, was wearing sandals and he was leaving a small trail of water on the cobblestone as he walked. Won’t you wait up?
She puts the fork between her legs, drinks a sip of water and with shaky hands she starts cutting into her meat. Then she says to Will, “You sit next to him so gleefully. I suppose you have embraced…” She tries to stop herself from gagging. Not there. Not now. “The faith he has bestowed on you.”
Will chuckles, giving his plate to Hannibal so he can serve him next. “There was no point in resisting what I was always supposed to become.”
“The moments you said yes to Hannibal, you said yes to yourself.”
Hannibal smiles, immediately knowing who she is paraphrasing.
Will says, “Thanks to Hannibal’s efforts I can embrace all aspects of myself. When I said yes to us, ‘all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.’”
“He said it was beautiful.” Hannibal passes Will his plate, making sure the juice covers the meat. “What do you know about love, Bedelia?”
An honest look into someone’s soul. Companionship. To be reborn as a mixture of you and someone else. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.
“It is an endeavor you never come out unscathed from.”
“Don’t love and death imply a sort of Becoming?”
“So you have found your substitute for therapy…” As she trails off Hannibal sits down and starts cutting what will be his portion of her meat. “And eating the one you left marinating.”
“You felt too comfortable in your own victimhood.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “Did you get all you ever wanted on that cliff?”
“And more.”
She holds her fork tighter as she stares at Hannibal’s serene gaze. Before she can stab this onto any of them, she needs to wait for the strongest effects of the drug to pass off. Luckily, with her left leg or without it, she has always been a fantastic psychiatrist. “Tell me everything. I have nowhere else to be.”
Will wipes the remaining juice off his mouth with a napkin. Says, “It was a joy to kill The Red Dragon. It didn’t feel like self-defense or murder. I just felt pure. When we were finished with him the sight of what we had done shone in all its beauty. It was like something in the air shifted or I had just perceived it.”
“How did it feel to see his body there?”
“Exhilarating. The blood poured out of him like a fountain. I thought I saw wings next to him. A halo over his head.”
“How was it, to be covered in his blood?”
Will leans into her with a smile. “It was warm and sticky and oddly sweet.”
And then he puts another piece of her in his mouth.
Bedelia leans back, alarmed. Hannibal glances between them with amusement. “As we held each other I was sure the teacups were bound to come together again. We were at the cusp of rebirth.”
She shifts in her chair; her dress is prickling her. She sips on some water, subtly scratching wherever she is tingling but it does not go away.
“Now we are two different people,” Will says, cutting her meat. He has been doing that for some time. Cutting her in dozens of small cubes and making eye contact with her once he is done cutting it. Only to go for a piece of tomato or lettuce instead.
He is always smirking as he chews. She tries her best not to give him anything. “You included, Bedelia. You are much different from your days in Florence or from our usual sessions.”
Consciously or unconsciously, Will moves closer to her and she cannot help but drop her gaze to his thigh, to his femoral artery, to the oxygenated blood that would splash her if she simply allowed herself to stab. “We all changed, regardless of how much we tried to keep being who we used to be.” She finds herself saying, dragging her gaze away from Will. Hannibal is not looking at her and she can breathe a little easier. “So The Red Dragon’s death caused you to see Hannibal’s design for both of you.”
“A creature’s life is in their blood. And we spill more blood to cleanse the bloodshed that made us sinners. Our knives pierced through his body—and it was easy. I got lost in the haze. Next thing I know, I had Hannibal in my arms and I knew I was going to be a new person.”
“What you are describing is the definition of a sacrifice.”
Hannibal chimes in. Again, an enigmatic smile. “Indeed. Sacred lamb he was, our Red Dragon. You know that God doesn’t mind offering forgiveness as long as the right blood is spilled.”
And as if Will cannot wait any longer he says, “Falling off the cliff was the most at peace I’ve ever been.”
“How did you feel when you heard the news of our passing?”
Bedelia shifts in her seat, the clinical answer jumping on the tip of her tongue, rattling against her teeth. You are not my psychiatrist, Hannibal. We are not friendly. But when she sets her eyes on Hannibal’s hand and sees his pinky finger brushing against a needle (long and shiny, exactly as the one he pinched her with earlier) an answer comes rushing to her. Relieved. Horrified. Hurried. Because either as men or as ghosts, I knew you would come to haunt me.
“I did not believe it at first. Not until I heard how you had died and only then… I thought you guys would be the next Hasanlu lovers.”
Will flashes his first actual smile of the night. “Kissing at the bottom of the ocean, our teeth far away from you.”
But she cannot find it in herself to care because if Hannibal's hand is getting closer to the shot then it would be a game of speed. Of fork against syringe. How to stop him without resisting him so openly? Time and time again Hannibal had shown her he is all about reciprocity: she cannot ask them to elaborate on their experience—not unless she is willing to give them something back. (And risk bringing onto herself a faster death.) She looks at Hannibal again. At his perfectly combed hair, at his dark green velvet suit, and the delicate watch on his wrist. (A watch. Then maybe they are in a time crunch. Hannibal never wears a watch when he dines his guests). And the more she watches the more she absorbs these details from him that fear has stopped her from noticing before. Like the multiple scratches in his face, especially on his cheek. Or the faint scar in his forehead. Or the very obvious protuberance in the left side of his wrist despite moving it fine (most likely a poorly healed fractured Radius—either Hannibal was too active to keep his arm in a sling or they could not afford one for a while.) Or the fact that ever since this dinner started, Hannibal’s hand has been near Will’s.
Hannibal is vain and aches to be in close proximity to Will even if it is just in metaphors.
It might not be enough to stop him from killing her but she would have to give it a try. “Now Will is behind the veil with you. If anything, there might not even be a Will and a Hannibal anymore… just this. You have completed each other, and now infinitely roll across the Earth playing god.”
Hannibal’s hand shifts away from the syringe, getting closer to Will instead. “I was already playing god before. Nothing better than to do it alongside him.”
She lifts up her glass of water.
“Cheers.”
“You look lonely,” says Will to Bedelia after another bite of lettuce and tomato. Hannibal’s hand has not moved.
“Do I?”
“Are you orbiting around your emptiness, stuck in infinite circles of greed?”
“I believe I will always be orbitating my emptiness despite whoever comes to fill it.”
“Always the pessimist,” Hannibal adds. His hand shifts closer and closer to Will’s so that their pinkies are touching. Will lets him. “Are you not curious to see what true fulfillment and satisfaction feels like?”
“Shame is to ugly things and ambition is to beautiful ones. Love is beautiful for some… but it is nothing short of horrible for me.”
“Your emptiness is not that different from other people’s. At the end of the day, it has the shape of god.” As Hannibal finishes his sentence, he wraps his hand around Will’s to which Will smiles. A real smile, if Bedelia can judge that from her sessions with him. And just like in her sessions with him, she is still surprised he has not thought over all the ways he can escape Hannibal once they crush and burn. If that pleased look in his eyes is any indication, he must relish in the fact that he alone can continue making Hannibal a god or break him into less than a human. Less than a monster. But does he ever ponder what it means to have an apex predator looking for the warmth of your hand? “We all need to fill that hole God left when he put us on Earth. And we all crave to fill it—with things that might not be a perfect fit, with multiple things at once. And in the attempt of filling it we ourselves become the same as god.”
Looking at his smug face, he surely does ponder it a lot.
Once she is back in her senses, she immediately glances at Hannibal. He has removed his hand from Will’s and her heart rate eases once he skips over the needle and pinches a piece of her. But as he starts chewing, he takes a sip of his water to gulp her down.
Her lips part and she holds the fork tighter but she blinks rapidly, as if trying to dissipate whatever it is crawling up from inside of her. “I don’t know if that’s the case for me. I am under no impression that absence and want are the core things that make us human. My absence might change its shape, but I will always gravitate to it, like mass to a black hole.”
And Will only replies with a loud “Hmm.”
They eat under the wavering candles and now Bedelia has ventured enough to try the salad but the lettuce is torn apart under her teeth, turning into bitter water while the crunch of the onion makes her temples pound. The moist sound of Hannibal and Will’s chewing is so loud it feels like it climbs up from under the table, settling on top of her, trying to topple her over. And she cannot stop watching Will scrambling his food: pieces of onion mixed in with pieces of lettuce, cubes of tomatoes half-eaten when they could have been eaten at once, vinaigrette in messy lines across the plate, and grains of rice sticking to anything it touches. And in the furthest corner, in perfect rows, her flesh going cold.
She looks away only to find Hannibal staring at her.
“So love has made you a god,” she mutters only to be hit with a wave of shame for her lack of subtlety. She is terrified at how well he is able to read her. “But you still think there is a God above you.”
Will answers instead, “Blame it all on cognitive dissonance.”
Yet, Hannibal seems delighted at her curiosity. “It is the same as always, if there is a God out there, then He laughs at the smallness of my contributions.”
“Or maybe he pays attention to our contributions to know when to expect us.”
Despite Hannibal’s stare Bedelia turns to Will. If during their sessions he had appeared reckless, a moth to a flame, the Will in front of her is as radiant as the flame itself. She would be lying if she says she does not feel a persistent tug towards him and she only realizes she is leaning closer once she sees the end of his forehead scar. Under her gaze, he lifts his head higher. The only time she had been this close to him his body had immediately gone stiff. Now he remains perfectly lax.
“Love suits you, Will. I think I see better when you say that love makes people into gods. Do you feel stronger? More powerful?” She had tasted it. When she had given herself up, just a tiny bit of herself, she had channeled Hannibal’s power and it had thrilled her as much as it had horrified her. She had had a glimpse of the woman she could be: eating her way through the upper class of Europe, looking down at them while salivating at their taste. Lydia Fell. “Do you feel like you can do anything? Like you could be anything?”
She is not sure when she is done talking. If there is a short or long pause between her last word and the ones that are supposed to come next. She is only back in herself when she follows both Hannibal and Will’s eyes, staring right at her shaking hand. She puts it down, joining the one that holds the carving fork. But her hand still shakes. And she knows that this whole time it was her greed talking.
“You know that feeling well, Bedelia.” She drinks a long sip of water and right as she gulps, Will takes a bite of her. Her throat goes dry. “Too bad mere observation had you so terrified.”
The water almost goes down the wrong pipe and instead of its insipid taste, she seems to be savoring the marsala that marinated Hannibal’s clams and acorns as well as the bitterness it used to leave in her trachea. “So you were never scared of what he would do?”
“I was but I still played the game and paid the price. You made sure you would never have to pay.”
“Then seeing him make me pay should please you. Would you call this justice?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
She glances between Hannibal and Will. I did what I did to survive. She is inclined to say the truth because they know it. Because if she says she deserves this punishment they will know it in her eyes that she is lying. But wouldn’t telling the truth get her killed faster?
“Isn’t there anything more detestable to God than a lover who does not risk their life for their beloved?” Hannibal asks, so casually, as if just making polite conversation—the same polite conversation that will bury her six feet under. “Some people say that is why Orpheus did not make it out of Hades with Persephone. He dared come in there alive.”
Bedelia represses a laugh and a huff. Hannibal had some guts—and though she wants to answer, she bites her tongue, hard enough to taste some blood. She will live. Or so she thinks until Hannibal and Will put their knives and forks parallel to each other, pushing their plates away. It would be a shame not to savor you, Hannibal had said and yet he wasted her in this sick little game.
Her heartbeat starts to pick up. “About your journey here–”
Will smiles again. “Dr. Du Maurier, I think this can be the end of our wrap-up appointment, yes?”
She turns to Hannibal, as if to plead with him, but he sips on his champagne while holding Will’s hand. Fighting has energized her and if she is able to keep the conversation going for a little longer she may be able to help herself: stab the fork in their necks, find her next best weapon, even close herself off in the bathroom until they break it down. They all seem fine to her as long as she gets away from this dining table.
So she says, “You talk about satisfaction as if it’s achievable. As if we are not trapped in these bodies that prevent us from reaching whatever it is inside of us and inside of those we love. As if there is a way to be, sustainably, one forever. Your bodies may merge for some moments but you spend longer being two rather than one.”
This lights a fire in Will’s eyes she has only seen when he swore he would not let Hannibal be captured again. “But that’s the point… to chase after a memory that always ends up floating away from us… to grasp something that disappears the moment we try to touch it… that is what makes it so addictive.”
And Hannibal seems infected by Will’s passion. “It becomes a reason to wake up, to find new ways to possess each other, and, again, to be tangled in each other’s arms falling down that cliff.”
He tried to kill you.
“The eroticism of a chase carried out with the aim to merge… has been exchanged for the eroticism of chasing down the memory of your first union… You’ll end up disillusioned once it stops feeling the same.”
Will scoffs. “Who says it won’t?”
“Nobody wants what they already have.”
“Then we’ll create absence, fill it, create it once again. Life will pass us by in this endeavor and death will catch us in the haste of it.”
How can it be—
“…that easy?”
“Imagination.” And Will is beaming when the last consonant has come out of his mouth.
Whatever they plan to do with her next, whether it is Will, Hannibal or both, she knew it would be with their hands.
As if confirming her suspicions, Hannibal nods at a plate near her that so far has remained untouched. “Those are your snails. I made them with butter, garlic and pink salt, exactly as you like them.”
And then for some reason she thinks back to Florence: him on the verge of desperation; her in total possession of herself. You intended to eat me and I knew you had no intention of eating me hastily. Him, exhausted and blank-faced but not unaffected by her; her, cunning, sly, full of payback that others would call betrayal, I have not marinated long enough for your tastes. You may make a meal of me, Hannibal but not today.
And he had but he had not savored her.
She scrapes into the snail, swallowing all of its soft parts. The butter melts into her tongue and it slides through the gaps in her teeth. It tastes so good, too good, and it is a pity to think she too was marinated this thoroughly but Hannibal did not enjoy her half of what she had enjoyed that snail. Maybe she had not lived up to the taste he had anticipated, and stuck in that anticipation, he needed to let her know his disappointment. In Florence he gulped the saliva that pooled under his tongue just imagining her taste and in Évora he needed water to swallow her.
Will giggles out of anywhere.
“Sorry, I can’t believe we are all here. To be fair I warned you meat was back on the menu but I didn’t know you told Hannibal he could make a meal out of you. How dirty.”
“I am looking for forgiveness.” And that part feels oddly real so when she stares at Hannibal, she is sure she looks hopeful. “For not dying the first time it was asked from me.”
Will says, “As if you would ever throw away your life for anyone but yourself.”
“I have made mistakes and I will pay their price, ten-fold.”
“This is not forgiveness, Bedelia. This is vengeance.”
And though he has not uttered a word during Will and Bedelia’s exchange, Hannibal stands up.
It is as if a raw bolt of electricity goes through her body as she sees him go towards her. And then there is the clash of his polite, sharp face with the brutality she remembers him by. As he takes his time walking, Bedelia wonders if the light will catch him at a certain angle and she will be able to see him entirely through his human veil. And then what? Be frozen in fear? Be forced to eat her own meat? And how would it happen? Will he stand there and wait for that to coerce her or will he open her mouth and push the piece until she swallows herself? And then what? Will he slap her for not living up to his imagination? Will he put his hands on her neck and press until there is no air and there are no words to explain why she failed?
If that is the case then she must be quick. “Has forgiveness happened to you, Hannibal? Has it knocked on your door and did it find you willing to let it come in?”
He stops right in front of her and his figure has completely covered all the light. “Yes.” And then his hand is turning into a fist. “But you know what kind of god I aspire to be.”
She inhales sharply, closing her eyes. This is it and she is not ready. She thought she would go for Will first, assuming that Hannibal may have more mercy for her. Perhaps he could look at her and dwell in the past for a second, long enough for Bedelia to pull out her carving fork.
Her hand is already lifting when Hannibal walks past her to open the curtains.
“Will, please take our plates to the kitchen.” Then he turns around and Bedelia’s hand is back to hiding under the table. As sadistic as ever, he stresses, “It’s time for desert. Ladyfinger’s biscuits. But I am afraid you can only have them, Bedelia, once you are done with your food.”
Will picks up Hannibal’s plate and his own, slowly disappearing to the kitchen. Bedelia hears Hannibal open up the window and take a deep breath. The cold breeze hitting her skin and the faint echo of the old church bell keeps telling her this is real. So does her grip on the carving fork and her sweaty thighs rubbing against her dress. And yet she can see her body from above. There it is: long blonde hair falling down her right shoulder, shoulder blades protuberating through her dress, the carving fork slippery in her fingers. She can almost hear what she would have said to herself had she been her own patient. Every person has an intrinsic responsibility for their own life.
Will’s silhouette emerges from the kitchen and with him a plate full of biscuits. Once he steps into the living room, Hannibal is already closing the window and settling across from Bedelia, a wry smile on his face. Hannibal and Will soak the fingers in the espressos and then seep from it, synchronized in a way that only intimate habituation allows. It is a rare sight—she was used to seeing them ache for each other’s absence but rarely had she seen them bask in each other’s presence. And it is exactly what she expected: when their eyes meet there is no one else. It is almost touching if it is not for the fact that they keep toying with her by having Will hit his spoon with his plate after long intervals of silence, making her jolt out of her seat.
Hannibal grabs Will’s hand and caresses his knuckles. “The Greeks took over the Phoenician alphabet, a syllabic sign-system where they did not write down their vowels. The sign represented a syllable and the reader knew what vowel came because of context. But the Greeks took the syllables of this alphabet and broke them down into single units of sound.”
“What was once one is now two.” There is a bite to Wil’s words. And he keeps hitting his porcelain plate with his metal spoon, louder each time.
“But vowels could only exist after this separation. Any linguistic sound has two requirements: a sound as well as the start and stop of that sound.”
“So a consonant?”
“Exactly.” Hannibal puts down his own cup harshly. The porcelain cup and the porcelain plate meet in a sharp clack. “The Greeks created a way to symbolize absence in language. Now a consonant could exist as a concept—possible to be imagined but impossible to utter on its own.”
“So they put boundaries to things that were perfectly fine being joint.”
Hannibal smiles, tender and amused. “You seem rather mad at that.”
“I wonder why we must create space between stuff that is fine being one.”
“Probably because eros has wired us to insist on the space between us. I am holding your hand, Will and all I can think of is how our legs are not touching and our heads are not touching and our arms are not touching. I keep dwelling on that pain.”
Will drags his chair closer to Hannibal’s so as to have their knees rub against each other, their legs pressing against each other, and their foreheads lingering close, almost touching. The squeak from Will’s chair has her grasping to the table for dear life.
“How is this?” Will asks.
“Much better.”
Will whispers, affected by the distance. “Continue, please.”
“Ever since the Greeks broke down syllables, eros started living in the alphabet itself.”
“So eros lives in the consonants?”
“Yes, at the edge that they mark onto sound. A most brilliant invention.”
Will is giving his back to Bedelia so she cannot see them kissing. But she can hear the wet noises their mouths make when they meet at different angles, the gasps they take when they need to breathe, the rustle of their clothes as the fabric is grabbed or twisted. At some point Hannibal’s got his hand up in Will’s hair, pressing against his nape and when Hannibal kisses Will in his cheek, she sees a fraction of Will’s smile. It is radiant and blinding, puffing his cheeks, making him seem even more invincible than he already did. She does not even think they are doing this to test her. No one is so modest that they will not kiss in front of the food.
As if cued, Will drops his spoon, landing on the table with a clonk. Bedelia jumps out of her seat with such force she throws her own cup of water. The crash makes her scream.
“I am sorry for my clumsiness,” she stutters as Hannibal and Will part from each other.
Will’s voice is full of venom. “You apologized. Again! I almost don’t believe my own ears.”
That’s it—those blue eyes laughing at her shame. There is not a trace of that mumbling man who was always going through it. Instead Will meets her gaze, armored with a tranquility and impassivity that makes her feel like he is a spectator of her circus. And she feels so raw, so vulnerable, she has to glance at herself to make sure she actually has that blue Egyptian dress on. As she sits and holds the carving fork, so heavy in her palm, Will lifts one of the biscuits. But before he bites it, there is a sudden trembling in his right hand. A flash of frustration passes through his face to which Hannibal holds his wrist, moving his hand out of the way. And then in a hushed voice he asks Will if he wants Hannibal to pass him something.
Has he been trembling all night? It is rhythmic and it happened just as he tried to do a voluntary action. Maybe a hit in his cerebellum. She squints, looking at the scars in his forehead. Though they seemed like nothing under the candle lights she could see they went a few inches around his forehead and one to two inches around the zone of his temples. Brain surgery scars…
Perhaps her chances are not as bad as she thinks. None of them are in their physical prime and deep down, she knows nothing good will come out of her trying to avoid confrontation. They see her intentions clearly and they think of her as lowly.
She sets the fork between her thighs, lifting up her palms. “How romantic. To think you were eager to kill Hannibal less than a year ago and now you can’t wait to disappear in him.”
“Romance is inherently turbulent.”
“Mmm… indeed, nothing is as romantic as killing someone together and then proceed to push you both off a cliff. The epitome of acceptance.”
Hannibal cracks a biscuit in two. “It’s tragic. I didn’t think I needed to spell it out for you. But your cowardice and greed have made you shortsighted.”
“Then we are both two blinds racing with each other to check who can see the least.”
“Maybe we are. And yet, you were the one to say that forgiveness and vengeance are akin to falling in love. And you were right then—love and hatred can live together closely and often do so. It is as if one’s feelings for someone are in a constant state of transformation, never setting for too long in one end or the other. Two is always one.”
To which Will adds pertinently, “A spectrum.”
“The moment he saw the world as you did, he decided to end both of you. He accepted you in death.”
Hannibal smirks. “If love and death are change, then what is love if not the death of the self?”
She locks eyes with Will, eager to see how her words would land. “Then are you pleased with the shape Hannibal’s love has made out of you? Or did understanding Hannibal’s design for both of you drain you of your last ounces of compassion and self-righteousness?” God, yes, she is good at this. That’s exactly why she has stayed marinating all these years. “Is there anything left of you, Will?”
And for the first time of the night it feels like one of her attacks has had its intended result—no wicked smiles or blasé stares, no Hannibal sitting back on his chair, at the end of the table, planning how to torture her at every step of the way. No Will sitting right beside him, confident Hannibal could get him the moon if he asked. Instead Will’s gaze dims and Hannibal is almost scowling. And she cannot resist the urge to keep poking them.
“Desire only aims for itself. You will never know satisfaction—not prolonged one, at least. Someday you’ll wake up next to him and realize you hate this man, this creature, and the person he has forced you to become. You’ll find your love feeble, pathetic, cancerous. Desire is never sustained. It thrives in newness.”
Even if they say they can rekindle desire or figure out new ruses, she knows it is a lie. Desire is fleeting in nature and once it is gone it is best to walk away from it. She had told that to patients for decades: if love does not make you feel powerful, you should not want it.
Will is the first one to recover but with no trace of his previous smirk. “There is so much me both in Hannibal and I. Just look at this dinner.”
“He will be disappointed once he sees you don’t share his appetite.”
But Hannibal retorts, “I will only eat criminals and Judases if that is what he wants from me.”
“That is not how nature has wired you.”
“Nature can be tamed.”
Killing indiscriminately to killing whoever deserves it. Will’s hand is on top of Hannibal’s, covering it completely. Hannibal nestles against his touch, almost as if he could not help it. And then she sees it: that warm viscosity hiding in the dark depth of his eyes. Or maybe it is more cliché. Like a thousand stars learning how to shine for the first time in the middle of the void. She is aware of Hannibal’s humanity. Painfully so. But why does it surprise her to see him looking at Will that way when Hannibal would always stress how much he adores him? Is it the gap between hearing something and witnessing it? All the details of an event words cannot conjure or contain? The only thing she knows is that that look of adoration and relief scares her because she is not so sure that if she attacks Will first, Hannibal will falter. He looks too willing to comply. And Will looks too smug. Too ready to fight. And in case he had not made it clear how ready he is, he says, “Do you think he would let your flesh go cold just like that after how long it took to prepare you?”
She turns to Hannibal who, if not indifferent, looks slightly entertained. She says, “Then, cheers to turning a new leaf and to nature overturned.” She raises her glass to Will who looks at her with no emotion behind his eyes. How come it took her so long to realize it? Hannibal could never match Will’s sadism. “And congratulations to the chef.”
As she drinks her first sip of champagne she is aware of what she is communicating: the drugs have started to wear off and she is willing to engage with them with all of her cruelty. As she holds the fork between her thighs she keeps thinking of how it would be to hurt them. To have the fork pierce their skin, trespassing the first of so many boundaries; to have it twisting it deep inside and see what she retrieves; to have it maim them deliciously.
Hannibal nods towards her plate. “Finish your food.”
“You made me into a vegetarian.”
“One bite you might change your mind.”
“I don’t change my mind that easily.”
At last, a genuine smile. “You don’t. You are above all feeling and irrational decision. Incorruptible and unchangeable and so utterly complete.”
“There is nothing wrong with trying to adhere to personal convictions, Hannibal.”
“Which made it quite a task to break you. You held onto your ethics so fiercely that it was the only thing that betrayed your passion or sincerity. Behind all of that clinical indifference, there was your beating heart.”
And when he puts another biscuit in his mouth, it hits her.
“What do I taste like?”
“Insipid.”
Crack.
She inhales deeply and exhales loudly. However they reduced her into another ingredient for ladyfingers, she is sure they have not left huge chunks of her that are hard to chew but Hannibal’s nature and Will’s show demand theatricality: bite onto her as if her remains, even pulverized and unrecognizable, are tough and chewy, a hassle to consume. Soak her in coffee so she can stop being leathery, stringy, rough. Just find a way to make her tender.
Though she knows it is a game, she cannot stop herself from giving them the exact reaction they want. She is full of shame. “You tried killing him and yourself because you couldn’t stand to be shaped in his image. Because you tremble in fear at the prospect of his love. Can’t live with him, can't live without him. And you… Hannibal, we’ll see how bendable you are to change.”
“Is that why you left me in Florence? Did it terrify you what my love could do to you?”
“Our relationship was never that intense— and I could see from miles away that your feelings for Will Graham were going to destroy you and everything that surrounded you.”
“You let me bang on my own.”
“I did not want to be destroyed.”
“Neither did you want to soil yourself with guilt. Is your reputation that important to you? Or did you not want the smell of the monster to get on you?”
“I did not help kill your victims.”
Will puts his biscuit down. “But you were fine when those kills benefited you. And don’t deny it, Bedelia, you too prefer persuasion over coercion.”
She looks at him. And if she blinks she can almost see it—Anthony reaching for the door, his blood tainting the tiles or the way she used to stand in front of Hannibal as he played the harpsichord. She looks away.
“What did you want me to do? Cut someone’s ankles while he incapacitates them? Distract them before he gives the final blow?” And then she lowers her voice, full of the same venom Will gave her. “Serve wine after he heavily drugged someone?”
“Would be much more honest than plant in his head that he must eat me.”
Has he ever tried to persuade you to kill anybody? Because he will. And it will be somebody you love. And you will think it's the only choice you have.
Well. There is a reason why it is easy for her to understand Hannibal. “And yet you are still here.”
“In spite of you.”
“I can see better how this dinner was your orchestration.”
“I suggested we served you with something fatty to ease up on your bitterness.”
“Should’ve gone for my heart instead.”
“There’s plenty of time for that. You have no idea how much we are looking forward to killing you.”
She holds both of their gazes even as their anger starts to be transparent. Even as the prospect of them approaching her makes her want to puke herself. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up and she hopes her eyes do not falter. I know exactly what I’ll do to you.
Hannibal sets his spoon down and Bedelia can smell something crisp in the air. “I fear our dinner is coming to an end.”
And Will sips on his coffee. “What’s there to fear?”
Bedelia is getting her way because Hannibal is standing up and he is holding the syringe and he is getting rid of its bubbles: tapping the barrel, pushing the plunger until it drips and when he is done he is pointing at her with it. Her hand shakes in excitement, the fork is in the air and in her fingers, the schrödinger fork, also unsure about her future.
When Hannibal stands up in front of her, he covers the light from the candles.
“You must finish your plate, Bedelia.” He says it without an ounce of judgement and there is something weirdly endearing in how he sits in front of her, pushing the plate back after she tries to push it away. “It’s only courteous.”
Full of stubbornness, Bedelia crosses her arms over her chest. They could stay there forever. The very first time either one of them falters, she knows what to do with the fork. With the same firm tone from before, Hannibal repeats, “You know I hate rudeness.”
Two words that normally did not apply to her but Hannibal turns her into another person than herself. And that is what she is about to reply when Will, suddenly behind her, pinches her nose, long enough to force her to inhale through her mouth. Hannibal forces the piece of her flesh down her throat. She swallows it.
By the time they are done, Will is laughing. It starts as a chortle and then it turns into a maniacal laughter that echoes through the living room and brings a defeated but amorous look in Hannibal’s eyes. Who can change you, boy? And he seems to be pressing Will for an answer with his eyes. Who can tell you what you can or cannot do?
Meanwhile Bedelia has had enough time to taste herself before it settles (back?) inside her. And now she knows Will has been lying this entire time because she tastes so sweet. So, so sweet that she stabs the fork in Hannibal’s hand, takes it out, and graces Will’s neck.
Hannibal holds her by her arm, stopping Will from grabbing her by her hair and slicing her throat with the carving knife.
“Fair enough,” Weirdly Hannibal is out of breath. She pictured killing him in so many ways but she never expected him to be out of breath. “We should not have insulted you like this.”
And in the most treacherous way of disarming her, just like she had done to him, he kisses her in the corner of her mouth. And she feels as if pieces of her skin were flying off her muscles, as if her muscles were carved off her bones, as if her bones were to turn to ash, leaving all her soft parts to fall and burst. Somewhere inside her mind she knows this is inevitable—he would need to deceive her just like she had deceived him because reciprocity is one of the main rules Hannibal lived by. And he would refrain from kissing her in the mouth because it would have placated some of her yearning and Hannibal wanted to keep her hungry. Because more than wanting to be loved back by him, more than wanting to be close to him, she wanted to survive him just like Will had survived Hannibal’s kiss and now gets to stand next to him. So utterly beautiful and complete as if he was a god in his own right. It was anguish, to be glimpsing what she could be in another world where Hannibal was not who he was and where she was not who she was and where desire left everyone fulfilled.
Hannibal backs off, enough for her head to clear but not enough so they stop breathing each other’s exhales. “Bedelia, I thought you would take death in stride. That now, when there is nothing else for you than this, you would take power in your knowledge or you would at least attempt to have fun as you marinate. But all you’ve done is hold onto the carving fork, wait for the shot to wear off, and hope for the next best chance to stab us. In some sense, it is admirable. You have a tenacity to survive. I can’t say I’m indifferent.”
But Bedelia was taught to be cautious. She knows that in most relationships between men and women, a woman always loses more: her sense of self, her independence, her freedom, her whole reason to be. That one could live her whole life being great and a man could beat you out of your own greatness. And yet who amongst us does not crave to fuse with others—to be torn apart by the violence of fusion and by that same violence, to be reborn into something new? Into something better?
But could the love of this man make her into something better?
She would never dare to figure it out.
“That is what I like you about, Bedelia,” murmurs Will, as he injects the anesthesia into her veins. It is cold, terribly cold, and it terrifies her that this might be her last sensation on Earth. “You will not let yourself be devoured.”
And because she does not handle fear well and because she would never allow Will to put an end to her life, she sticks her fork, the fork she has eaten with this whole dinner, to her own aorta.
Somewhere deep in her brain there is a thought on beauty as she twists the fork deep onto her artery and takes it out of her neck but it only begins to take shape once the blood starts squirting from her. It takes her a couple seconds to realize it is a childish desire for her blood to pour out of her like a fountain, bountiful and generous and not to leave anything unmarked. That is why she is glad when Will’s perfectly white shirt is tainted with her, all across his chest—and she cannot help but laugh when she sees his childish disappointment at her dying. He looks like she blew out the candles of his own birthday cake.
Hannibal immediately tries to stop the bleeding with some napkins. She moves her neck a little—yeah. Now it is tainting his pants.
“Don’t worry,” she manages to spit out, smug and satisfied with their disappointment. “You can stab me again and pretend that you killed me.”
Hannibal drops the napkins and puts his finger in her wound, deepening it. Will grabs the carving fork and stabs her in the other side of her neck. But she knows that after Hannibal and Will have experienced so much satisfaction, it is time they feel some disappointment. She knows that the wounds they have made on her are nothing but another way to placate their frustration. In a weird way she gets it because the satisfaction she gets from having chosen how she dies is not as sweet as seeing the outline of their figures diffusing and becoming one as they walk away from her.
“I’m hungry,” she thinks she hears them say. And as she leaves this Earth, she fears she is hungry as well.