Facing her was more difficult than he had expected.
The fluorescent lights flickered to life, accompanied by the familiar scrape of chains against the tiled floor, but Will remained in the doorway, unprepared to descend the steps and witness what Hannibal had done. The house behind him was calm. He wanted to step back into the orange glow of the hall and allow it to envelop him, away from the white glare before him and everything it contained, but the weight of the canteen in his hand corporealized his conscience and pulled him down. The copper tang in the air prepared Will for the blood, settling like a macabre motif along the grout, but it was the resentment harboured behind red rimmed eyes that caused Will to falter when he saw her. Quite suddenly, the notion that his empathy could be of any help was unfathomable. In the present picture, he was the monster. He let his eyes drop to the floor, and approached her like he would a stray, kneeling in the mess a few feet away from her.
“I brought you water,” he said, well aware that she was intelligent enough to take it.
He looked up briefly as he slid the canteen her way, watching her eyes narrow and knowing instantly what she was thinking; they had already drugged her by force, and when they were ready to kill her they would be direct about it. Still, she waited for his hands to retract before jolting forward with what must have been every ounce of her remaining strength to bring the cool, wet rim to her lips.
While she was occupied, Will perused her injuries. It wasn't quite as awful as he had imaged; more of a raw, intricate scarification than the bloody gouges he had been expecting. Every one of Hannibal's vicious creations seemed esoteric now, and Will could only find fault in himself for his ability to unravel the intent behind them. Instead of deep gashes, her arms and legs were peppered with slender, curling cuts that served to prolong her life while appealing to Hannibal's penchant for aesthetics. Stems and petals of dried, beaded blood stretching along the expanse of her arms.
She didn't finish the water, stopping to catch her breath with the canteen clutched to her chest. Her black hair hung like a curtain between them, keeping her face concealed while she composed herself. There was something feline in the way her back arched, spine protruding just enough to confirm that food was scarce wherever she had come from. She wore only her underwear, but Will knew Hannibal well enough to know that her sodden clothes had been cut away to reveal what he had adopted as his newest canvas, and that was all. They stayed that way for a time, while Will did his best to discern what he could from her silence. It hardly took an empathy disorder to recognize the loyalty and strength needed to stay silent through Hannibal's ministrations, or the depth of her survival instinct, though everyone who had made it this far was a survivor in their own right.
When Will's knees began to ache, he lowered himself to sit and simply continued to observe. He could see the woman's shoulders tensing with each passing second until eventually the underlying curiosity he had suspected compelled her to break the silence.
“You're the dog guy, right?” She looked up as she spoke, some of the earlier resentment replaced with a wary interest.
Will felt a wavering smile creep unbidden to his face.
“Uh, yeah, I'm the dog guy,” he said with an awkward nod, feeling a little uncomfortable now that he was the one being scrutinised, “Will.” He supplied.
The woman seemed to take a moment to digest her current situation, shifting to face him and wincing with the new position. Will's eyes darted to her wrists where the skin had become exposed with her struggle and rubbed at his own without thinking. He hadn't damaged himself so badly but then again, he'd been far more cooperative. When his time suspended from the butcher’s hook had been over, he wasn't left chained to the wall like this woman had been.
