He had slaughtered everyone who had even dared to touch Will, and everyone who had stood in his way. To Cordell, Hannibal had paid special attention.
Now he was holding Will securely in his arms, carrying him through the snow away from the Muskrat Farm. Will's limp body, still paralyzed by the muscle relaxant, weighed heavily on his strained thews and bones. His knees buckled from sheer exhaustion. On the open fields, Mason Verger's lackeys had been close behind them; here in the woodland though, shadows sheltered them both. Still shielding him with his own body against bullets and frost, Hannibal sank to the ground, yet not letting go of the man he was holding on to so doggedly.
Between the trees in a moonlit glade, a figure caught his eye. In the freezing cold stood a little girl, frail like a fleeting memory, her hair and dress stained from what might have been dirt or blood.
"Mischa... I didn't let it happen again..." Kneeling in the snow, he looked down at Will's bloody face. His fingertips traced the wound on his cheek and the one on his forehead.
"Are you going to eat him?", the girl's thin voice reached his ears.
"Not today." Through his increasingly blurred vision, Hannibal caught her expression, her countenance, just as quickly as he had back then. "You know very well who I am - what I am." With a groan, he overcame the hypothermia that had taken hold of his flesh, and got back up on his feet, lifting Will out of the cold again. "I am a monster."
He turned away from the fading image of his sister, taking determined steps, unfaltering despite stiff limbs. And like wind soughing through the trees' branches he heard her whisper: "Not today."
"I was trying to save Will from you, but right now, you're the only one who can save him. Promise me you'll save him." Alana to Hannibal 3.07
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