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"Sometimes, at night I leave the lights on in my little house, and walk across the flat fields. When I look back from a distance, the house is like a boat on the sea. It’s really the only time I feel safe," He said that to Hannibal in their last session. Will finds himself caught on these words now, sitting in those plush leather chairs once again.
"Where are you, Will?" Hannibal asks when he has stared in silence too long.
He was neck deep in the sea, watching the sway of sails on his small ship for a home.
"Before the Lost Boys, I spoke to you about safety."
"You told me of watching through the fog around your home from the edge of the woods. Is that where you were?" Hannibal speaks; Elegant, slow, deliberate as ever.
"I find myself out there more often, these days," He would spend minutes and hours every other day wading through the water of bushes to see the hull dip into the waves and rise again, cold and clean.
"Looking for safety," It wasn't a question.
"The frost that crawls up my spine is the warmest I have felt in years. Often I will watch the moon rise behind the roof and imagine I could navigate there by the light of the stars alone," No map, no land, just him and the howls of his pack, calling for him and the moon.
"You return to bed each night, even still."
"When I walk back, I stand outside my own window and look into my life as an outsider. The dogs have long since gone inside to pile together and sleep on my bed in the living room. The lights I left on change as I approach, they seem to shine pink in the night, painting the rooms a gentle rose tint. The scene is staged and perfect as I peer through open blinds," Will shares. Sometimes he feels as if he is stalking himself, trying to get closer to a man he is already uncomfortably intimate with, "When I open the door, the shade bleeds back in, draining all color from the vision. Then the cold is just cold."
"As and observer, your life seems idealistic, seven dogs in a quiet home by the river."
"When I drag my bare feet along the floor, the tinted window panes shatter under the force of reality, leaving the truth of the anxiety that has soaked into the foundation of the house. A bed in the front room is revealed as a nervous man's coping instead of the dog lover's paradise it seemed," He tells Hannibal.
"When I was there to feed your pack, it did not feel like the product of night terrors you see it as. It appeared just as you said, a dog lover's paradise where the animals are always close and happy."
"Both are true, Doctor Lecter, but I come inside from my sea of grass and it is only the dreams that bring me to the bed. If not for the nightmares, it would be upstairs like before and I would sleep on the ground with the dogs," Will had done it. Before the night sweats, he would curl up by the space heater with a furry body under one arm and another in the crook of his legs. When he started waking multiple times a night and disturbing the dogs, he moved the bed downstairs to stay close without bothering them, "I go to that mattress on a cheap metal frame and no longer feel the blanket of safety from outside. When I come in from the cold and I do not feel a deck slowly rock beneath my feet, I lie down in what I can only call defeat."
Will closes his eyes, gently leaning his head back. Here, in this office, he can almost feel the sway of waves underfoot. This office has become something close to safe.
"In your world, the one you glimpse through your blinds, what is so different? Beyond the intention behind where the furniture has been laid."
That is the question. What changes when his life is seen through a happier lens? What would make that vision a reality? With his eyes still closed, he answers, "I see Abigail there."
This response seems to interest Hannibal. Though his voice stays placid as always, Will hears him shift across the leather, "What is she, in this ideal?"
"She likes to sit on the floor in a nest of paws and snouts, reading by candlelight that's never blown out by eagerly wagging tails," She reads Will's fishing manuals and strokes Winston absently, looking more content and comfortable than he has ever actually seen her. He feels himself smiling before he continues, "On the days where I find her there, I stand outside until my limbs are beyond numb and the dogs are whining to be let out. I'll open the door only reluctantly and watch candlelight fade into the glow of the space heater."
"Do you enjoy the isolation of being a man on the outside, Will, or do you crave the family that world presents?"
This gets Will to open his eyes, looking at the ceiling for a moment then dragging his eyes back to Hannibal across from him, "I would be a good father."
They both know that doesn't answer the question.