Oh. That does make sense. If he was medicating her. Was he medicating her? Or, wait, maybe just monitoring how often he dosed her with Pewter? The concept of bedsores doesn't even occur to Neph, as Pewter's always healed abrasions faster than they can open up. This time, with her healing abilities preoccupied by her fucked up arm and bruised ribs, there might not have been any energy to spare.
She doesn't answer Hannibal, because she's too busy watching Hannibal. He doesn't flinch when she says Will's name, doesn't tense up or scowl the way she'd expect if Will had broken up with him and limped back to their busted apartment. He just tidies up the nightstand and finds a space on the mattress beside her. He ends up sitting near her shoulder, which Neph decides she doesn't like. It's not what she wants. She lets go of his hand, plants her palm by his hip, and heaves. The sudden motion yanks the IV and rattles its stand. Her arm shakes, lax muscles trembling as they re-engage after a long rest, but they're enough to get her up far enough to lean her head on Hannibal's shoulder. Then she takes his hand back. A dribble of blood seeps out from beneath the IV tape, ignored.
He's warm as a sunbaked rock from his shower, skin still a little sticky with heat. She's so cold, she just wants to plaster herself to his back and doze back off. Neph presses her cheek against the bony spur of his collarbone and sighs through her nose. Did he--wait--she knows that smell. That green, herbal smell. He totally grabbed his own soap from their bathroom, didn't he?
The familiar scent, the seeping warmth and her own burst of energy combine to leave her all pliable and dumb. That's what she'll tell herself later, when Hannibal prods at her about Will, and she lets the most painful truth slip in answer: "You're pretty much the only person who's ever stuck by what they promised me," she mumbles against his skin. "I don't--I don't blame him, s'prob'ly smarter an' safer for him not 'ta be 'round us, but..."
But he'd promised. And then he'd joked with her until she'd passed out. He was probably in shock at the time. Promises made when a person's lost that much blood don't count, and he's had five whole days to realize that. He must'a left really early on for Hannibal to be this chill about it--
"He's gone for a walk," Hannibal says, snipping clean through that choking vine of thought. Neph tips her head up, mouth falling open, as he calculates the time left on Will's outing. She can't decide whether to scream We were kidnapped like A WEEK AGO by crazy racists who KNOW WHAT WE LOOK LIKE and you're just letting Will wander around ALONE or He seriously stayed here for almost a WHOLE WEEK all on his own and you didn't have to handcuff him to a bed or leave his leg all messed up to do it? The two sentiments sort of cancel each other out, leaving her gaping in silence.
"Oh," she manages, instead of Why would he do that? He saw. He saw for himself and he stayed? Neph ducks her head back down, her good shoulder rounding in to squeeze against Hannibal's side. She doesn't--she can't--but why--she just--needs a minute. On autopilot, she says, "Call him and ask him ta bring back like eight pounds of Chinese? I forgot to tell you 'bout that part'a Burnout."
Hannibal would be a hypocrite if he looked at the blood lazily seeping from her IV after Neph drags herself closer to him and thought to himself that she's being a bit dramatic. And yet he's never really not been a hypocrite. He'd also been expecting her head in his lap, where he can easily pet her hair and pull it back from her face - they've done that often enough when she's gotten her period, with him slowly breathing out that mint-cool soothing that seems to wind her right back down into napping for a few hours through the worst of it - but this is nice, too.
Quite frankly, knowing that she crawled up to his shoulder with a burst of energy after having been in a coma for the better part of a week is nothing but nice. Hannibal tilts his head towards hers, because it feels different to rest near her when she's conscious, when she has all the little movements and changes in breath that someone who's awake does without thinking.
"I could ask him." Hannibal says, and suddenly there is a hint of deviousness in the stare he's directing down at her hair. "But then he'd be expecting you awake when he arrives back." Which is only a problem if Neph, say, didn't want him to have a heart attack. "Did you not want to surprise him?" That. That right there. That is why Will doesn't fully trust them together. It's this thing that's happening right now.
The burst of warmth Hannibal feels for her eclipses even the comfort of messing around with his other friend's head, however. "I missed you." He says all at once, matter of fact and staring at her face.
Coma or no coma, it takes Neph .04 seconds to catch Hannibal's drift. Much easier and more fun than catching bullets, as it turns out. He probably feels her answering grin, the uneven line of her teeth, against his shoulder. "We gotta," she agrees, wriggling a little with excitement. Chinese food's great, and she's about to need a massive carboload, but shit the look on Will's face!
(She doesn't know how she scared him. She doesn't know he sat vigil as though she were slipping away. She knows only that Hannibal is here and seems to be taking things in his stride, and that they've deemed things safe enough for Will to go for walks, so it's easy to fall out of cautious survival mode. Hannibal short circuits her usual procedures like that. It's nearly pavlovian by now.)
Neph turns her face up to beam at Hannibal, eyes crinkling and nose scrunching in the first purely happy surge she's felt since she left their apartment that morning a week ago. She expects to see Hannibal's conspiratory face and, yeah, she catches the edge of it as it's whisked away, but what's left behind weighs on her like an arm around her shoulder. Her smile falls away, her fingers tightening around his.
"I'm sorry," she tells him. "I didn't mean t'leave you alone that long. I overdid it." Then, of course, she remembers how that came to be, and her eyebrows pinch together. "When they took the bag off an' I saw you an' you were already messed up--" Neph sucks her bottom lip into her mouth to keep it from wobbling. Much like with her period, her emotions are all over the place after Burnout. "--let's both try not ta'do it again, okay?"
For the first time, Hannibal is truly surprised by what she says. He wouldn't label the feeling self-conscious, but his head tilts down in acknowledgement and his tone grows more severely thoughtful. "I did not mean for us to be captured. I am sorry you needed to come for us."
It was Will's fault. Hannibal has gone over the encounter multiple times and he thinks, were he alone, he would not have been taken. He would have killed everyone or escaped out the window to someone else's patio. It's possible he's wrong - but he may very well be correct.
And if it had been him and Neph? Well. The warehouse itself is proof that the men would not have even touched them. Hannibal has even less attachment to social rules than Neph, has even less tethering him back to earth, and when Neph gets caught up in his nonsense, well - it's easy to let thoughts string together that he should perhaps know better than to say out loud.
"We should teach Will how to defend himself, the way we can." He says, reasonably, with passion, even. Like this is just another bonding activity, a reasonable one and a good way to solve the problem Neph's brought up, the 'getting into trouble' problem.
"No, I mean," Yeah, this arm situation is getting real old real fast. Neph wants nothing more than to throw both around Hannibal and crush him close, but she physically cannot. Fuck her entire life. "That's not your fault just...don't get beat up. Will either. I'll come get you. We handle things better when it's all'a us. Or both'a us."
He had her back. She'd laid out two people for him, easy peasy, and he went after more dangerous targets because they'd followed her. Since she can't physically squeeze him, Neph hooks her chin over his shoulder and rolls her eyes up to meet Hannibal's serious gaze. Her nose practically butts the corner of his jaw. "And I'll avoid comas."
On second thought, maybe she ought to avoid impossible promises. Sure, she can still count her Burnouts on one hand, but the number of actual physical confrontations she's been involved in has skyrocketed these last few years. With no indication that trend will reverse, and combining anti-mutant sentiment with her own risky business, things may only grow more dangerous around her. Around them both.
Hannibal's remark dovetails right into her thoughts. Neph makes an agreeable noise, blinks, and rears up a little. "Hannibal, he can't defend himself like we can," she points out, equally reasonably. "I'm--y'know and you're--you too." Inhuman. Used to solving their own problems. A little too prone to reaching for knives, first. Neph settles back against his shoulder with a perturbed grunt. "He might not wanna stick around for trouble," she reminds him, a little quieter. "But if he's gonna be a cop, he'll hafta learn his way 'round a fight anyway. Can't go gettin' stabbed'r shot'r whatever happened with his leg all the time."
Oh. That's not - what he thought she meant. That he should just avoid solo encounters from now on. That waiting for reinforcements is an option available to him.
Not that he'd expected her to leave them there. Once they'd been captured, he'd hoped she would come - a vague emotion and desire that Hannibal hadn't realized he was still capable of. It had burned like a coal in his stomach until the moment he saw her, when it flared up and didn't extinguish until he'd had two limp bodies in the back of a car he'd stolen, hours later.
He just hadn't expected to hear it put like this, laid out for future engagements. Hannibal stares down at her raptly, even though it cranks his neck to do so, with her laying on his shoulder. He tilts down and, with a motion he's done several times a day since she slipped away from him and Will to heal herself, Hannibal presses dry lips to her hairline. "A deal for both of us, then." Sealed with a kiss, apparently.
It makes Hannibal only slightly more reasonable in the face of Neph's logical argument, to be in such a good mood. "All the more reason to teach him, if he expects to spend his life capturing people like us." Hannibal says, somewhere at the intersection of smug and thoughtful. "But you're right. He has a different-- reasoning behind his desire to be in the cross fire. Not to survive, but to...serve."
Hannibal's never had to think much on Will's motivations for wanting to join the police force, actually. It's been a great joke, it's been a sign that he has high aspirations for himself, it means motivation and drive and sharp intelligence but a certain lack of self-preservation. It had meant so many good or exciting things that Hannibal has not sat down to pull apart the why from Will's point of view, only the 'why it helps' from his own.
"...He's concerned about where we learned how to fight so well." He adds, perhaps unnecessarily. But it's the one piece of this that Hannibal hadn't been able to steal parts to solve, that first night. He'd save everyone's bodies, he'd hidden them away safely, and Neph is still on his side - feels more strongly tethered to him, and him to her - but Will has remained a stoically emotional mystery. He hasn't been quick to release all of his worries. "And about us."
'Us', which means so much more now that Neph is awake. Hannibal tilts closer to her, greedy for body heat she can't share, too cold from her own long sleep. He tugs the blanket higher up her chest, leaves his arm across her after he's done.
This gesture, this whole 'mouth on her hair, or maybe her forehead' thing, is so new Neph doesn't see it coming, doesn't register alarm or anticipation or anything. One second she's blinking up at him and the next he's ducked down, closed lips a brand against her cold skin.
There'd been no time to react back at the warehouse, no room for anything but a flash of startled confusion amidst the panic and adrenaline. She's had literally no chance since to think about it. This time there's no thought at all, just a flashflood of memories so old they've worn away to sensations - the smell of her mother's hand lotion, the way her wedding ring would snag when she'd comb Patricia's hair, the silk of her father's tie slipping between her hands, the weightlessness drowsiness of someone else putting her to bed and tucking her in. Kisses goodnight, kisses goodbye, kisses just for fun. Family, family, family.
Tears sting her eyes, the first warm thing she's managed for herself. Neph ducks her face into Hannibal's neck. Her hand slips loose from his and snakes around his back, hooking the far side of his ribs. She breathes through her nose, her mouth too firmly wedged against his pulsepoint in something that can't really be called a return kiss. For long seconds, the better part of a minute, she hides there, struggling to control her reaction. Hannibal adjusts her star blanket and puts his arm around her in turn.
Somehow Will's the safest topic available right now. Let's teach him how to capture people like us, Hannibal suggests, and Neph snorts so hard she practically blows a raspberry down his neck.
"I really hope you mean 'dangerous people' and not, like, 'specifically mutants and magic users'," she says as though her voice isn't kinda thick. Has she occasionally had vague nightmares of Will arresting her? Yep. Does she want to imagine a future where he uses his experiential knowledge of them to form some kind of anti-meta taskforce? No. She knows Will, though, and that's been enough to keep those specific nightmares at bay. So far. "I think he just...wants things to be better for people like him." The scared. The lost and ignored. Weird, bright kids. Neph wonders why he's fixated so much on cops and not, like, social workers or lawyers, but maybe that's pure self defense.
It wouldn't be so bad if he used whatever he's learning from them to accomplish that. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe wasn't going to take that information and run. Neph shivers into her blanket, her voice dropping into a rough whisper. "He's not gonna care where we learned how, he's gonna care that we killed, like, ten people."
The deaths bother her more, now, removed from the immediate need. They color her thoughts and perceptions, so that Hannibal's use of 'us' can only mean their collective bodycount. And, maybe, what it means for Will staying with them in the future. "Could you let him go?" she asks. "If he...if he wasn't okay with what we did?"
If asked by anyone else, Hannibal would say he doesn't remember the last time he cried. If Will or Neph asked, he'd say that it was during his first day at the orphanage, about twenty-four hours after he'd been found wandering the woods alone and half-frozen. It's less due to the effort of remaining stoic and more due to the fact that nothing seems to quite reach in close enough to hurt him that way again. Anything short of losing Mischa barely even registers as pain.
If he lost Neph, though? Or if Will had been killed during the initial fight with their captors? As Neph buries her face against his neck and Hannibal doesn't comment on the way her eyes welled up just before she pressed in, Hannibal thinks that that may have done it for him.
Perhaps the relief of not losing him feels similarly for Neph. Hannibal finds he enjoys that thought, just as he enjoys the way Neph clings to him. It's like steel foundations being built next to his own ironclad sense of self - like Neph wanting and needing him makes himself more complete, more important.
'Is it...because you just realized you're in love with Neph?'
Hannibal tilts further over Neph, lets his torso turn towards her at an angle that is absolutely unsustainable for his spine but which finally gives them enough points of contact. "Of course I only meant dangerous people. Will feels removed from the rest of humanity as well, whether or not he meets either of our requirements for being outside that group." Hannibal can't help but feel that catch in the thought though, where Neph's now laid down a snag. Will is used to being alone. It's not unreasonable to think that, enough horrible events witnessed, he might go rogue from all sides and become his own force, going after whoever seems most dangerous.
That's...a threatening thought.
'Could you let him go?' Hannibal stays very, very still at that. He can feel his own pulse elevate, moment by moment, until he forcibly breathes slower and his heart beat has to match it.
"...I don't think I could hurt him to make him stay." Hannibal says, very softly. He says it like that would've been his first thought, before. His grip on Neph's hand has tightened, although he hasn't noticed. "I'm not...sure what I would do." And he's finding, to his surprise, that he doesn't like thinking about it. Hannibal can entertain himself with theoretical scenarios without consequence, most of the time - or so he thought. Or has he just always looked away from the scenarios he didn't like?
"I don't know what I would do if you left me, either." Hannibal says, and that thought has barbs. It's not just words. It's got weight, enough to crush his ribs if he lets it sit there on his chest. He thinks he would kill everyone who he thought had contributed to Neph leaving him, but he can already feel the hole that would leave.
"Why would you ask me that?" There's no accusation in his voice, just blank surprise. Surprise at himself for his reaction, surprise at Neph for her continued insistence that Will won't understand them, won't want them, once he finds out enough of the truth. She's always thought that. It never stopped, apparently, not even after Will proved that the mutant/magic angle wasn't enough to scare him away. "Do you think everyone would leave you, and would leave me, once they find out how high the risk is?"
Mashed against him like this, Neph feels the exact moment her question drops and Hannibal picks it up. He freezes, but his breath hitches. He doesn't blink, but his pulse hammers against her mouth. She's struck by the perverse urge to bite down, as though it might escape otherwise. After a long minute, Hannibal's ribcage expands in a slow, steadying breath. Neph mostly just hangs on for the ride at that point, fascinated in a tired and slightly detached kind of way.
That was way more emotion than she'd meant to trigger, when the question slipped out of her mouth.
In the same distant manner she recognizes that she really oughta be more alarmed that hurting anyone to keep them around is in Hannibal's playbook. Like, at all. But as she just said, they just killed like ten people. How is taking out an external threat any different from hurting the threatened person to keep them close? It's a path of logic that shouldn't be so easy to walk, yet here she is, making her way down it and into his brain. She's not so far gone that she doesn't feel a surge of relief that Will is safe, that he won't ever see Hannibal's white, white teeth gleaming in his bloody, bloody face, not turned against him.
"I'm not gonna leave you," she hisses, fingers digging into his opposite hip. What had she said to him, that night a couple months before Will moved in? That she doesn't want to see him hurt, but she's too selfish to take herself off to a safe distance? Yeah. That. "I'm gonna--we're gonna take care of each other, okay? No matter what."
The enormity of what he's done for her, what caring for her this last almost-week must've looked like, is still sinking in. If she thinks about it too much, looks at it straight on, this tenuous control over her tear ducts is gonna go bye-bye. It's almost overwhelming to acknowledge the obvious stuff, like the pins in her wrist or the stolen IV equipment, like the blanket he keeps stealing off her bed and the fact that the sheets feel clean against her legs. She feels gross but not downright disgusting, not a crusty risen corpse like the last time Burnout took her. Hannibal did all that, and he kept her safe in the process. Neph will return that to him one day, whatever it takes.
She's doing it now, in part, by trying to prepare him for a nasty possibility. "'Cuz I don't want it to break you if he does," she sighs, "And 'cuz he...he's allowed to go if he wants. He deserves that."
Will shouldn't be trapped with people who scare him. Just like Neph doesn't deserve to have her fear of abandonment thrown right in her teeth like this. She full-body flinches under Hannibal's arm, shoulders jerking into his armpit and the hollow of his elbow. Her mouth crimps up in a miserable line. It was one thing for Will to accept Hannibal as a mutant - people at least know they exist. It was another for him to accept her abilities - he was onboard with mutations, magic's really just a step further. He'd even accepted some of the dangers she'd described for him, but now the threats are piling up on Hannibal's side, too. Asking him to stay just means taking on double the risk.
He might be willing to stay for Hannibal, but he didn't choose her. He sort of got her on a two-for-one sale. She can't expect--she doesn't expect. Not anything. Not from Will. In a creaky whisper, Neph says, "Yeah, I do. I'm a--" A flash of Hannibal beating a man's face in with a gun, not once but twice. "We're monsters, Hannibal. And we almost got Will killed. He'd be crazy to stay."
She turns her head away from Hannibal and scrubs her eyes against her shoulder. The cast comes all the way up her arm, but whatever it's made of is wrapped in soft bandages that blot moisture well enough. Neph stares determinedly at the tacky wallpaper until her eyes feel dry, wondering if Will's been considering escape routes on these walks of his.
"Do you think he'll stay?" she doesn't mean to ask, much less sound like such a baby when she does. She hasn't meant for a lot of things to happen.
Neph's promise rings through him. Neph doesn't usually go for direct statements of loyalty, she isn't firmly planted in anything that way. But then there's 'I'm not gonna leave you' while she digs fingers into his flank like a feral thing, someone possessed. It's a language Hannibal responds to immediately, one that snaps through him, breaks right through any other thoughts and leaves them contentedly cut off.
It makes the conversation after, the part where Neph lays out that Will isn't like her, a little easier to bear. And she isn't wrong. Will's not like either of them - Will's extremes are his own, but they don't include killing people in self-defense. They don't include threatening people to stay with him. They don't include this hip-bruising grip on the things he wants.
At least not yet, which is what this blossomed friendship between himself and Neph has taught Hannibal. That he can want things and not lose them, sometimes.
"We're monsters that would protect him, though." Hannibal says, and Hannibal doesn't flinch at the name. "And he knows that now. That will matter to him." But it might not matter enough, it might not be the whole picture. Will's stubborn and Will is...surprisingly moral. Hannibal has already hit up against that wall once or twice, the way Will can see and feel and empathize with terrible things but how hard he fights to swim above their currents.
"...I was very certain he would stay." Which is as sneaky as Hannibal can mention that Neph has got doubts swirling back up from where Hannibal had happily pushed them aside. Will's been sharing a living space with him, but of course, he's had to. He's still healing, he's got nowhere else to go. As Hannibal examines the past five days, he sees more and more how Will has had no choice but to stay in place. What if he could leave?
"I think we should call him." Hannibal says all at once. The certainty that Will won't think it was funny not to tell him that Neph awoke settles on Hannibal's ribs just as surely as Neph's arm does. "Tell him that you are alright." He'll have to move to go get his phone, of course, considering he's naked under that towel. And moving doesn't sound like the most appealing prospect right now, concern or no concern.
Monsters that...protect? Neph's head tips so far to the left her neck pops and her hair brushes her shoulder. She turns the concept over, examining it as intently as she's ever applied her Bronzesight to an enchanted bauble. To say it's a new idea would be assuming she'd ever considered her abilities anything but dangerous or self-serving. She'd always thought she was being self aware. Had she been shutting herself off from other, better applications? All this time?
"Oh," is all she says at first, as her thoughts trip back to that miliinstant when she'd decided to drop down and stop the bullet instead of deflecting it. The gun was so close, a nudge might've only sent the shot into his jaw or neck instead--
That will matter to him. Hannibal says, and the only reason his conviction matters at all is because he admits he's no longer so sure it will be enough. If he can doubt that, then he must be right about their protection having some weight. Neph only realizes her mouth has parted at the thought when she has to swallow and lick suddenly dry lips.
"I hope he does," which is...more than she's admitted to Hannibal out loud, up til now. She's insisted that Will move in with them if he wanted, she's sided with him in arguments and she's spent dozens of frustrating hours chewing through textbooks beside him, but she's never come out and told Hannibal I want your boyfriend around. I like him here. It's a day for declarations.
She's not awake enough yet to handle Hannibal's abrupt 180 on Messing With Will, even with the unsure turn this conversation's taken. Neph blinks and nods slowly, conceding to his read on the situation. She's been unconscious for like a week, what does she know about Will's current mental state? "Okay," she clears her throat, lightens her voice, "Tell him 'bout the Chinese food then."
If sharing the news means he comes back instead of hobbling as far as his leg will take him, who's she to complain?
Hannibal's mouth does that thing it does when he's torn between a couple priorities, such an everyday thing that Neph smiles tiredly and shifts off his shoulder. "Go 'head," she pats at him. "M'gonna take a shower. I prob'ly smell like a housefire." The fact that Hannibal willingly got all up on her anyway says a lot about how freaked out he must've been by her Burnout. Just for that, she won't make fun of him for grabbing his own shampoo from the apartment.
"I will." Hannibal says, and he finds he's getting up despite himself, practiced routine getting him up as soon as he's settled on a task - no matter how much more appealing it sounds to lay down with Neph and not move, not let go of his grip on her.
He's off the bed by the time Neph mentions a shower. He turns back to her, mouth open but silent for a moment while his brain processes what she's just said. "Your cast isn't waterproof." Is what he settles on, as the least-rude possibility. "I could find you a trash bag for it, but I would recommend just using the bath." And bathing one-handed. Which doesn't sound terribly feasible. Hannibal turns that thought over as he approaches the nightstand, picks up his phone.
When he dials, he hears a ringing tone...doubled? Not just in his ear? Hannibal pulls the phone away from his head just in time to confirm that, yes, he's hearing a phone near the door--
"Yeah?" That's Will's voice, also doubled. There's the sound of a key turning in the lock.
Oh. "...You're back early."
"Not really." Will says, and now it's his voice in the room that's loudest, Will swinging the door open, Will dragging against the door handle a bit more than he usually would. He's always more sore after a walk. Hannibal thinks that's part of the reason he insists on going out three or four times a day to stretch out his newly-knit muscle. "I told you I'd probably be back by the time you were done with your shower."
Hannibal just brings the phone down away from his ear, hanging it up as he goes. There's not quite any point in trying to salvage this, now, because any second Will's going to look up and see that Neph's--
Will drops his phone. He also swears, a surprisingly soft thing, swallowed against an intake of breath as he freezes in place. Will's eyes don't look over for Hannibal's accusingly, he doesn't ask why Hannibal didn't call him immediately, the way they'd discussed on the third evening, both of them wondering how long this would go on for.
"Y-- You're awake." Will says, staring at Neph. He's got his glasses on from his walk still, and his curls are flatter to his forehead than usual from the sweat that gathered on it. "You woke up." He repeats, and in that is the unspoken 'we weren't sure you really would'. His breathing is suddenly loud and harsh and he stays rooted to the spot.
Across the room, Hannibal just watches, clearly ignored by at least one of them.
As soon as Hannibal stands and the mattress rights itself, Neph reaches for the headboard to pull herself all the way upright. On her inhale, she notes the soreness in her core, the sleepy complaints in her legs. Her body's gotten rusty in the five days she's been out, and now it'll need a couple more days of easy work before it responds the way she's used to.
"The bath?" she repeats, nose crinkling in dismay. She's never met a motel bath she was totally comfortable standing in barefoot, let alone lying down in naked. She's done it but always felt kinda gross later.
Then again, this is a shower Hannibal's been using. If it hasn't been bleached right down to its atomic structure she'll be shocked right back into her coma. "You're prob'ly right," Neph sighs as she shoves the blankets down and swings her legs off the edge of the bed. "I shouldn't be standing on slippery stuff anyway. Or, like, at all." Not at first. Not until her knees come back online.
Her toes brush the carpet, damp where Hannibal stood dripping in his towel, and she carefully eases her weight to the floor. She's just about to go full vertical when the lock clicks and Will shoulders through, one hand on the doorknob and the other holding his phone to his ear. Neph freezes and takes him in, enjoying the rare opportunity to study him while he's totally unaware of her.
Will looks...better than she'd've thought. Better than she remembers, for sure. He's sweaty and clearly tired, but there's color in his face and the dragging exhaustion in his voice is more satisfied than frustrated. He's recovering, she thinks, which is more than she could've hoped for when they were both bleeding all over that stolen car.
What happened to that car, anyway?
Will's phone slips from his hand and clatters to the garish carpet. Neph flinches on instinct, but if it cracked then at least it didn't shatter all over the place. She can't check to see, not with the way Will stares at her in desblief, eyes huge and wondering behind his bent frames.
His glasses survived the warehouse. For a second, she's so hung up on that tiny miracle she hardly hears him. It's not until the second you woke up that she refocuses on his face, on the fear and relief and confusion there. And she smiles in disbelief of her own, because someone was worried about her.
"Just now, yeah," she has to reach for the water Hannibal set aside and take another sip, briefly turning away from Will to do so. When she looks back, he's still staring, like if he blinks she might vanish. "I'm...I've never seen Burnout from the outside, I'm sorry, It must'a been...freaky."
If she says I'm sorry I scared you, she'll spend all day having to sort through all the recent apology-worthy scares, of which there are, uh, at least a dozen. There's a conversation looming on the horizon that Neph's not sure she's really ready to have, but right now Will's standing on his own to feet, no longer bloodlessly white, here in this room with her and Hannibal. With the monsters. Unafraid.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
I need you to put that icon away pls thx
Date: 2017-08-22 05:17 am (UTC)She doesn't answer Hannibal, because she's too busy watching Hannibal. He doesn't flinch when she says Will's name, doesn't tense up or scowl the way she'd expect if Will had broken up with him and limped back to their busted apartment. He just tidies up the nightstand and finds a space on the mattress beside her. He ends up sitting near her shoulder, which Neph decides she doesn't like. It's not what she wants. She lets go of his hand, plants her palm by his hip, and heaves. The sudden motion yanks the IV and rattles its stand. Her arm shakes, lax muscles trembling as they re-engage after a long rest, but they're enough to get her up far enough to lean her head on Hannibal's shoulder. Then she takes his hand back. A dribble of blood seeps out from beneath the IV tape, ignored.
He's warm as a sunbaked rock from his shower, skin still a little sticky with heat. She's so cold, she just wants to plaster herself to his back and doze back off. Neph presses her cheek against the bony spur of his collarbone and sighs through her nose. Did he--wait--she knows that smell. That green, herbal smell. He totally grabbed his own soap from their bathroom, didn't he?
The familiar scent, the seeping warmth and her own burst of energy combine to leave her all pliable and dumb. That's what she'll tell herself later, when Hannibal prods at her about Will, and she lets the most painful truth slip in answer: "You're pretty much the only person who's ever stuck by what they promised me," she mumbles against his skin. "I don't--I don't blame him, s'prob'ly smarter an' safer for him not 'ta be 'round us, but..."
But he'd promised. And then he'd joked with her until she'd passed out. He was probably in shock at the time. Promises made when a person's lost that much blood don't count, and he's had five whole days to realize that. He must'a left really early on for Hannibal to be this chill about it--
"He's gone for a walk," Hannibal says, snipping clean through that choking vine of thought. Neph tips her head up, mouth falling open, as he calculates the time left on Will's outing. She can't decide whether to scream We were kidnapped like A WEEK AGO by crazy racists who KNOW WHAT WE LOOK LIKE and you're just letting Will wander around ALONE or He seriously stayed here for almost a WHOLE WEEK all on his own and you didn't have to handcuff him to a bed or leave his leg all messed up to do it? The two sentiments sort of cancel each other out, leaving her gaping in silence.
"Oh," she manages, instead of Why would he do that? He saw. He saw for himself and he stayed? Neph ducks her head back down, her good shoulder rounding in to squeeze against Hannibal's side. She doesn't--she can't--but why--she just--needs a minute. On autopilot, she says, "Call him and ask him ta bring back like eight pounds of Chinese? I forgot to tell you 'bout that part'a Burnout."
everyone's taking out their cuddling icons, though!
Date: 2017-08-23 02:51 pm (UTC)Quite frankly, knowing that she crawled up to his shoulder with a burst of energy after having been in a coma for the better part of a week is nothing but nice. Hannibal tilts his head towards hers, because it feels different to rest near her when she's conscious, when she has all the little movements and changes in breath that someone who's awake does without thinking.
"I could ask him." Hannibal says, and suddenly there is a hint of deviousness in the stare he's directing down at her hair. "But then he'd be expecting you awake when he arrives back." Which is only a problem if Neph, say, didn't want him to have a heart attack. "Did you not want to surprise him?" That. That right there. That is why Will doesn't fully trust them together. It's this thing that's happening right now.
The burst of warmth Hannibal feels for her eclipses even the comfort of messing around with his other friend's head, however. "I missed you." He says all at once, matter of fact and staring at her face.
put that back where it came from or so help me!!
Date: 2017-08-24 04:35 am (UTC)(She doesn't know how she scared him. She doesn't know he sat vigil as though she were slipping away. She knows only that Hannibal is here and seems to be taking things in his stride, and that they've deemed things safe enough for Will to go for walks, so it's easy to fall out of cautious survival mode. Hannibal short circuits her usual procedures like that. It's nearly pavlovian by now.)
Neph turns her face up to beam at Hannibal, eyes crinkling and nose scrunching in the first purely happy surge she's felt since she left their apartment that morning a week ago. She expects to see Hannibal's conspiratory face and, yeah, she catches the edge of it as it's whisked away, but what's left behind weighs on her like an arm around her shoulder. Her smile falls away, her fingers tightening around his.
"I'm sorry," she tells him. "I didn't mean t'leave you alone that long. I overdid it." Then, of course, she remembers how that came to be, and her eyebrows pinch together. "When they took the bag off an' I saw you an' you were already messed up--" Neph sucks her bottom lip into her mouth to keep it from wobbling. Much like with her period, her emotions are all over the place after Burnout. "--let's both try not ta'do it again, okay?"
so glad you're not too old to have also watched monsters inc!
Date: 2017-08-26 01:57 am (UTC)It was Will's fault. Hannibal has gone over the encounter multiple times and he thinks, were he alone, he would not have been taken. He would have killed everyone or escaped out the window to someone else's patio. It's possible he's wrong - but he may very well be correct.
And if it had been him and Neph? Well. The warehouse itself is proof that the men would not have even touched them. Hannibal has even less attachment to social rules than Neph, has even less tethering him back to earth, and when Neph gets caught up in his nonsense, well - it's easy to let thoughts string together that he should perhaps know better than to say out loud.
"We should teach Will how to defend himself, the way we can." He says, reasonably, with passion, even. Like this is just another bonding activity, a reasonable one and a good way to solve the problem Neph's brought up, the 'getting into trouble' problem.
I was going to rant about how I was still a kid!! but then is he dangling a CHERRY in that icon?
Date: 2017-08-26 05:31 am (UTC)He had her back. She'd laid out two people for him, easy peasy, and he went after more dangerous targets because they'd followed her. Since she can't physically squeeze him, Neph hooks her chin over his shoulder and rolls her eyes up to meet Hannibal's serious gaze. Her nose practically butts the corner of his jaw. "And I'll avoid comas."
On second thought, maybe she ought to avoid impossible promises. Sure, she can still count her Burnouts on one hand, but the number of actual physical confrontations she's been involved in has skyrocketed these last few years. With no indication that trend will reverse, and combining anti-mutant sentiment with her own risky business, things may only grow more dangerous around her. Around them both.
Hannibal's remark dovetails right into her thoughts. Neph makes an agreeable noise, blinks, and rears up a little. "Hannibal, he can't defend himself like we can," she points out, equally reasonably. "I'm--y'know and you're--you too." Inhuman. Used to solving their own problems. A little too prone to reaching for knives, first. Neph settles back against his shoulder with a perturbed grunt. "He might not wanna stick around for trouble," she reminds him, a little quieter. "But if he's gonna be a cop, he'll hafta learn his way 'round a fight anyway. Can't go gettin' stabbed'r shot'r whatever happened with his leg all the time."
I cannot remember when it came out! And maybe!! Most of his icons are unavailable Im trying here
Date: 2017-08-26 01:07 pm (UTC)Not that he'd expected her to leave them there. Once they'd been captured, he'd hoped she would come - a vague emotion and desire that Hannibal hadn't realized he was still capable of. It had burned like a coal in his stomach until the moment he saw her, when it flared up and didn't extinguish until he'd had two limp bodies in the back of a car he'd stolen, hours later.
He just hadn't expected to hear it put like this, laid out for future engagements. Hannibal stares down at her raptly, even though it cranks his neck to do so, with her laying on his shoulder. He tilts down and, with a motion he's done several times a day since she slipped away from him and Will to heal herself, Hannibal presses dry lips to her hairline. "A deal for both of us, then." Sealed with a kiss, apparently.
It makes Hannibal only slightly more reasonable in the face of Neph's logical argument, to be in such a good mood. "All the more reason to teach him, if he expects to spend his life capturing people like us." Hannibal says, somewhere at the intersection of smug and thoughtful. "But you're right. He has a different-- reasoning behind his desire to be in the cross fire. Not to survive, but to...serve."
Hannibal's never had to think much on Will's motivations for wanting to join the police force, actually. It's been a great joke, it's been a sign that he has high aspirations for himself, it means motivation and drive and sharp intelligence but a certain lack of self-preservation. It had meant so many good or exciting things that Hannibal has not sat down to pull apart the why from Will's point of view, only the 'why it helps' from his own.
"...He's concerned about where we learned how to fight so well." He adds, perhaps unnecessarily. But it's the one piece of this that Hannibal hadn't been able to steal parts to solve, that first night. He'd save everyone's bodies, he'd hidden them away safely, and Neph is still on his side - feels more strongly tethered to him, and him to her - but Will has remained a stoically emotional mystery. He hasn't been quick to release all of his worries. "And about us."
'Us', which means so much more now that Neph is awake. Hannibal tilts closer to her, greedy for body heat she can't share, too cold from her own long sleep. He tugs the blanket higher up her chest, leaves his arm across her after he's done.
google says 2001! And oh no you're stranded with the most recent ones!
Date: 2017-08-27 05:56 pm (UTC)There'd been no time to react back at the warehouse, no room for anything but a flash of startled confusion amidst the panic and adrenaline. She's had literally no chance since to think about it. This time there's no thought at all, just a flashflood of memories so old they've worn away to sensations - the smell of her mother's hand lotion, the way her wedding ring would snag when she'd comb Patricia's hair, the silk of her father's tie slipping between her hands, the weightlessness drowsiness of someone else putting her to bed and tucking her in. Kisses goodnight, kisses goodbye, kisses just for fun. Family, family, family.
Tears sting her eyes, the first warm thing she's managed for herself. Neph ducks her face into Hannibal's neck. Her hand slips loose from his and snakes around his back, hooking the far side of his ribs. She breathes through her nose, her mouth too firmly wedged against his pulsepoint in something that can't really be called a return kiss. For long seconds, the better part of a minute, she hides there, struggling to control her reaction. Hannibal adjusts her star blanket and puts his arm around her in turn.
Somehow Will's the safest topic available right now. Let's teach him how to capture people like us, Hannibal suggests, and Neph snorts so hard she practically blows a raspberry down his neck.
"I really hope you mean 'dangerous people' and not, like, 'specifically mutants and magic users'," she says as though her voice isn't kinda thick. Has she occasionally had vague nightmares of Will arresting her? Yep. Does she want to imagine a future where he uses his experiential knowledge of them to form some kind of anti-meta taskforce? No. She knows Will, though, and that's been enough to keep those specific nightmares at bay. So far. "I think he just...wants things to be better for people like him." The scared. The lost and ignored. Weird, bright kids. Neph wonders why he's fixated so much on cops and not, like, social workers or lawyers, but maybe that's pure self defense.
It wouldn't be so bad if he used whatever he's learning from them to accomplish that. It wouldn't be so bad if maybe wasn't going to take that information and run. Neph shivers into her blanket, her voice dropping into a rough whisper. "He's not gonna care where we learned how, he's gonna care that we killed, like, ten people."
The deaths bother her more, now, removed from the immediate need. They color her thoughts and perceptions, so that Hannibal's use of 'us' can only mean their collective bodycount. And, maybe, what it means for Will staying with them in the future. "Could you let him go?" she asks. "If he...if he wasn't okay with what we did?"
...oh my god /i was ten/ what the hell
Date: 2017-08-29 10:50 pm (UTC)If he lost Neph, though? Or if Will had been killed during the initial fight with their captors? As Neph buries her face against his neck and Hannibal doesn't comment on the way her eyes welled up just before she pressed in, Hannibal thinks that that may have done it for him.
Perhaps the relief of not losing him feels similarly for Neph. Hannibal finds he enjoys that thought, just as he enjoys the way Neph clings to him. It's like steel foundations being built next to his own ironclad sense of self - like Neph wanting and needing him makes himself more complete, more important.
'Is it...because you just realized you're in love with Neph?'
Hannibal tilts further over Neph, lets his torso turn towards her at an angle that is absolutely unsustainable for his spine but which finally gives them enough points of contact. "Of course I only meant dangerous people. Will feels removed from the rest of humanity as well, whether or not he meets either of our requirements for being outside that group." Hannibal can't help but feel that catch in the thought though, where Neph's now laid down a snag. Will is used to being alone. It's not unreasonable to think that, enough horrible events witnessed, he might go rogue from all sides and become his own force, going after whoever seems most dangerous.
That's...a threatening thought.
'Could you let him go?' Hannibal stays very, very still at that. He can feel his own pulse elevate, moment by moment, until he forcibly breathes slower and his heart beat has to match it.
"...I don't think I could hurt him to make him stay." Hannibal says, very softly. He says it like that would've been his first thought, before. His grip on Neph's hand has tightened, although he hasn't noticed. "I'm not...sure what I would do." And he's finding, to his surprise, that he doesn't like thinking about it. Hannibal can entertain himself with theoretical scenarios without consequence, most of the time - or so he thought. Or has he just always looked away from the scenarios he didn't like?
"I don't know what I would do if you left me, either." Hannibal says, and that thought has barbs. It's not just words. It's got weight, enough to crush his ribs if he lets it sit there on his chest. He thinks he would kill everyone who he thought had contributed to Neph leaving him, but he can already feel the hole that would leave.
"Why would you ask me that?" There's no accusation in his voice, just blank surprise. Surprise at himself for his reaction, surprise at Neph for her continued insistence that Will won't understand them, won't want them, once he finds out enough of the truth. She's always thought that. It never stopped, apparently, not even after Will proved that the mutant/magic angle wasn't enough to scare him away. "Do you think everyone would leave you, and would leave me, once they find out how high the risk is?"
No that can't be right!!!
Date: 2017-08-30 07:16 am (UTC)That was way more emotion than she'd meant to trigger, when the question slipped out of her mouth.
In the same distant manner she recognizes that she really oughta be more alarmed that hurting anyone to keep them around is in Hannibal's playbook. Like, at all. But as she just said, they just killed like ten people. How is taking out an external threat any different from hurting the threatened person to keep them close? It's a path of logic that shouldn't be so easy to walk, yet here she is, making her way down it and into his brain. She's not so far gone that she doesn't feel a surge of relief that Will is safe, that he won't ever see Hannibal's white, white teeth gleaming in his bloody, bloody face, not turned against him.
"I'm not gonna leave you," she hisses, fingers digging into his opposite hip. What had she said to him, that night a couple months before Will moved in? That she doesn't want to see him hurt, but she's too selfish to take herself off to a safe distance? Yeah. That. "I'm gonna--we're gonna take care of each other, okay? No matter what."
The enormity of what he's done for her, what caring for her this last almost-week must've looked like, is still sinking in. If she thinks about it too much, looks at it straight on, this tenuous control over her tear ducts is gonna go bye-bye. It's almost overwhelming to acknowledge the obvious stuff, like the pins in her wrist or the stolen IV equipment, like the blanket he keeps stealing off her bed and the fact that the sheets feel clean against her legs. She feels gross but not downright disgusting, not a crusty risen corpse like the last time Burnout took her. Hannibal did all that, and he kept her safe in the process. Neph will return that to him one day, whatever it takes.
She's doing it now, in part, by trying to prepare him for a nasty possibility. "'Cuz I don't want it to break you if he does," she sighs, "And 'cuz he...he's allowed to go if he wants. He deserves that."
Will shouldn't be trapped with people who scare him. Just like Neph doesn't deserve to have her fear of abandonment thrown right in her teeth like this. She full-body flinches under Hannibal's arm, shoulders jerking into his armpit and the hollow of his elbow. Her mouth crimps up in a miserable line. It was one thing for Will to accept Hannibal as a mutant - people at least know they exist. It was another for him to accept her abilities - he was onboard with mutations, magic's really just a step further. He'd even accepted some of the dangers she'd described for him, but now the threats are piling up on Hannibal's side, too. Asking him to stay just means taking on double the risk.
He might be willing to stay for Hannibal, but he didn't choose her. He sort of got her on a two-for-one sale. She can't expect--she doesn't expect. Not anything. Not from Will. In a creaky whisper, Neph says, "Yeah, I do. I'm a--" A flash of Hannibal beating a man's face in with a gun, not once but twice. "We're monsters, Hannibal. And we almost got Will killed. He'd be crazy to stay."
She turns her head away from Hannibal and scrubs her eyes against her shoulder. The cast comes all the way up her arm, but whatever it's made of is wrapped in soft bandages that blot moisture well enough. Neph stares determinedly at the tacky wallpaper until her eyes feel dry, wondering if Will's been considering escape routes on these walks of his.
"Do you think he'll stay?" she doesn't mean to ask, much less sound like such a baby when she does. She hasn't meant for a lot of things to happen.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-03 11:13 pm (UTC)It makes the conversation after, the part where Neph lays out that Will isn't like her, a little easier to bear. And she isn't wrong. Will's not like either of them - Will's extremes are his own, but they don't include killing people in self-defense. They don't include threatening people to stay with him. They don't include this hip-bruising grip on the things he wants.
At least not yet, which is what this blossomed friendship between himself and Neph has taught Hannibal. That he can want things and not lose them, sometimes.
"We're monsters that would protect him, though." Hannibal says, and Hannibal doesn't flinch at the name. "And he knows that now. That will matter to him." But it might not matter enough, it might not be the whole picture. Will's stubborn and Will is...surprisingly moral. Hannibal has already hit up against that wall once or twice, the way Will can see and feel and empathize with terrible things but how hard he fights to swim above their currents.
"...I was very certain he would stay." Which is as sneaky as Hannibal can mention that Neph has got doubts swirling back up from where Hannibal had happily pushed them aside. Will's been sharing a living space with him, but of course, he's had to. He's still healing, he's got nowhere else to go. As Hannibal examines the past five days, he sees more and more how Will has had no choice but to stay in place. What if he could leave?
"I think we should call him." Hannibal says all at once. The certainty that Will won't think it was funny not to tell him that Neph awoke settles on Hannibal's ribs just as surely as Neph's arm does. "Tell him that you are alright." He'll have to move to go get his phone, of course, considering he's naked under that towel. And moving doesn't sound like the most appealing prospect right now, concern or no concern.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-04 12:07 am (UTC)"Oh," is all she says at first, as her thoughts trip back to that miliinstant when she'd decided to drop down and stop the bullet instead of deflecting it. The gun was so close, a nudge might've only sent the shot into his jaw or neck instead--
That will matter to him. Hannibal says, and the only reason his conviction matters at all is because he admits he's no longer so sure it will be enough. If he can doubt that, then he must be right about their protection having some weight. Neph only realizes her mouth has parted at the thought when she has to swallow and lick suddenly dry lips.
"I hope he does," which is...more than she's admitted to Hannibal out loud, up til now. She's insisted that Will move in with them if he wanted, she's sided with him in arguments and she's spent dozens of frustrating hours chewing through textbooks beside him, but she's never come out and told Hannibal I want your boyfriend around. I like him here. It's a day for declarations.
She's not awake enough yet to handle Hannibal's abrupt 180 on Messing With Will, even with the unsure turn this conversation's taken. Neph blinks and nods slowly, conceding to his read on the situation. She's been unconscious for like a week, what does she know about Will's current mental state? "Okay," she clears her throat, lightens her voice, "Tell him 'bout the Chinese food then."
If sharing the news means he comes back instead of hobbling as far as his leg will take him, who's she to complain?
Hannibal's mouth does that thing it does when he's torn between a couple priorities, such an everyday thing that Neph smiles tiredly and shifts off his shoulder. "Go 'head," she pats at him. "M'gonna take a shower. I prob'ly smell like a housefire." The fact that Hannibal willingly got all up on her anyway says a lot about how freaked out he must've been by her Burnout. Just for that, she won't make fun of him for grabbing his own shampoo from the apartment.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-29 07:49 pm (UTC)He's off the bed by the time Neph mentions a shower. He turns back to her, mouth open but silent for a moment while his brain processes what she's just said. "Your cast isn't waterproof." Is what he settles on, as the least-rude possibility. "I could find you a trash bag for it, but I would recommend just using the bath." And bathing one-handed. Which doesn't sound terribly feasible. Hannibal turns that thought over as he approaches the nightstand, picks up his phone.
When he dials, he hears a ringing tone...doubled? Not just in his ear? Hannibal pulls the phone away from his head just in time to confirm that, yes, he's hearing a phone near the door--
"Yeah?" That's Will's voice, also doubled. There's the sound of a key turning in the lock.
Oh. "...You're back early."
"Not really." Will says, and now it's his voice in the room that's loudest, Will swinging the door open, Will dragging against the door handle a bit more than he usually would. He's always more sore after a walk. Hannibal thinks that's part of the reason he insists on going out three or four times a day to stretch out his newly-knit muscle. "I told you I'd probably be back by the time you were done with your shower."
Hannibal just brings the phone down away from his ear, hanging it up as he goes. There's not quite any point in trying to salvage this, now, because any second Will's going to look up and see that Neph's--
Will drops his phone. He also swears, a surprisingly soft thing, swallowed against an intake of breath as he freezes in place. Will's eyes don't look over for Hannibal's accusingly, he doesn't ask why Hannibal didn't call him immediately, the way they'd discussed on the third evening, both of them wondering how long this would go on for.
"Y-- You're awake." Will says, staring at Neph. He's got his glasses on from his walk still, and his curls are flatter to his forehead than usual from the sweat that gathered on it. "You woke up." He repeats, and in that is the unspoken 'we weren't sure you really would'. His breathing is suddenly loud and harsh and he stays rooted to the spot.
Across the room, Hannibal just watches, clearly ignored by at least one of them.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-01 11:01 pm (UTC)"The bath?" she repeats, nose crinkling in dismay. She's never met a motel bath she was totally comfortable standing in barefoot, let alone lying down in naked. She's done it but always felt kinda gross later.
Then again, this is a shower Hannibal's been using. If it hasn't been bleached right down to its atomic structure she'll be shocked right back into her coma. "You're prob'ly right," Neph sighs as she shoves the blankets down and swings her legs off the edge of the bed. "I shouldn't be standing on slippery stuff anyway. Or, like, at all." Not at first. Not until her knees come back online.
Her toes brush the carpet, damp where Hannibal stood dripping in his towel, and she carefully eases her weight to the floor. She's just about to go full vertical when the lock clicks and Will shoulders through, one hand on the doorknob and the other holding his phone to his ear. Neph freezes and takes him in, enjoying the rare opportunity to study him while he's totally unaware of her.
Will looks...better than she'd've thought. Better than she remembers, for sure. He's sweaty and clearly tired, but there's color in his face and the dragging exhaustion in his voice is more satisfied than frustrated. He's recovering, she thinks, which is more than she could've hoped for when they were both bleeding all over that stolen car.
What happened to that car, anyway?
Will's phone slips from his hand and clatters to the garish carpet. Neph flinches on instinct, but if it cracked then at least it didn't shatter all over the place. She can't check to see, not with the way Will stares at her in desblief, eyes huge and wondering behind his bent frames.
His glasses survived the warehouse. For a second, she's so hung up on that tiny miracle she hardly hears him. It's not until the second you woke up that she refocuses on his face, on the fear and relief and confusion there. And she smiles in disbelief of her own, because someone was worried about her.
"Just now, yeah," she has to reach for the water Hannibal set aside and take another sip, briefly turning away from Will to do so. When she looks back, he's still staring, like if he blinks she might vanish. "I'm...I've never seen Burnout from the outside, I'm sorry, It must'a been...freaky."
If she says I'm sorry I scared you, she'll spend all day having to sort through all the recent apology-worthy scares, of which there are, uh, at least a dozen. There's a conversation looming on the horizon that Neph's not sure she's really ready to have, but right now Will's standing on his own to feet, no longer bloodlessly white, here in this room with her and Hannibal. With the monsters. Unafraid.