+ Orion: The Hunter +

+ Orion: The Hunter +

"Fuck you my child is fine" your child is thinking about the look on Hannibal's face when Will Graham finally embraced him and said "its beautiful" which meant he was Seeing and Hannibal was getting Seen for the first time in his entire goddamn life

God I'm so happy about the level of Simp Hannibal has reached in my story,, like

"He allowed himself, foolishly, and not for the first time, to sink into Will's hold"

"He would brave every hellfire and misfortune if only for his remarkable boy"

"Hannibal, never one for reverent prayer, found himself uttering one for Will Graham"

"'Seeing, and... being seen is something akin to being in love.'"

He's such a 🥺🔪

Hannibal, calmly: Will and I are engaged

Totally-straight Will, sweating and pulling a knife on him: IN COMBAT--

Watching Hannibal

Will, walks on screen:

Me: look at him!! There he is ugh he's so awful I Hate Him ❤

Hannibal, walks on screen:

Me: Whore

honestly though the power dynamic flip in wotl when hannibal gets shot by dolarhyde and is bleeding on the floor as dolarhyde sets up his camera and will just sips his wine is so good and honestly kinda necessary to their relationship, thematically? it’s the absolute inverse of the climax in s1 where will has been gaslighted, had his welfare disregarded by almost everyone in his life, medically neglected, and framed for murder. like, this is the polar opposite of the scene in roti where will is crying and shaking and hallucinating in hannibal’s dining room, begging please don’t lie to me, and hannibal casually gaslights him into a seizure. 

they changed each other (”did you think you could change me, the way i’ve changed you?” “I already did”): Will goes from a lonely and disconnected man pretending he’s fine and suffering through manipulation to someone who saw the worst and lived through it, proved he had a steel of spine and a heart full of blood and darkness, stole back his power with whispered words and manipulations and blood under his fingernails, and wormed his way into Hannibal’s heart so thoroughly that hannibal could not exorcise him. Hannibal went from a lonely and cold existence of being an apex predator shut up behind his person suit, sustained only by his little games and his kills and his aesthetics, to longing for the one person who could See him. He gutted Will in the uncontrolled impulse of the raw, visceral hurt of betrayal, then ran away to Europe leaving his perfectly respectable curated self behind him, and found that he could no longer sustain himself on beauty and violence alone, not without connection, not after being Seen. He was reckless and heartbroken in Italy, and even though Bedelia or someone like Bedelia should have been the theoretically perfect partner for him (beautiful, cultured, graceful, a wife to make him trustworthy with just enough darkness and fear in her heart so she wouldn’t turn him in) he found himself recklessly longing for his connection with Will. 

And this scene codifies that. Hannibal has no power, here. He is injured, he has been in prison, he’s a wanted man, and he has just been shot by someone who wants to kill him. So he looks up to Will, Mr Empathy himself, and says with his eyes, come on, beloved, are you really going to watch him kill me? and will, who has been shown his darkness and tried to shove it away until he finally embraced it with his feet on the ground and his eyes wide open, looks down at hannibal and takes a sip of his wine, because if he wanted, he could just do nothing. he could stand there and drink his wine and watch dolarhyde kill hannibal. he wouldn’t even have to stay; he could turn around and walk out and drive back to his wife and her child and have a decent life. say that hannibal kidnapped him but he got away when dolarhyde shot hannibal. no one would question him. 

and then will doesn’t. he takes that slow sip, watches hannibal’s eyes flick to him again and again (and for someone who deals so much in microexpressions as hannibal does, those glances are practically begging) and then moves to help hannibal, despite everything hannibal has done to him, because hannibal makes him feel alive and makes him feel more like himself than he has in years and for all that they have been through together, he loves him, deeply and helplessly. 

and then they kill, together, as equals, and hannibal helps him up despite having the more serious wound, and they embrace, and when will takes them over the cliff, hannibal is unresisting and lets them fall. 

its so good man. its so good. love the evening up of that dynamic