@questionablygourmet (in the interest of not making someone elseās post Even Longer, and because the subject has changed a little)
Hannibal must have been incredibly confident that Sutcliffe would agree to his plot to study Will, because if heād suggested it and Sutcliffe had been like āwhat the fuck man no wayā then Hannibal would be pretty fucked, wouldnāt he?
Even if Sutcliffe didnāt have anything else on him and therefore couldnāt go to the police or anything, he could definitely have told Will. And Will finding out both that he had encephalitis AND that Hannibal wasnāt trustworthy would have thrown a very large wrench into Hannibalās plans at that stage
Even if no one believed Will about it at first, Will is smart enough to realize heād need to check and make sure Hannibal hadnāt sabotaged him in any other ways, and of course that Hannibal was a killer
Hell Sutcliffe could have agreed to go along with Hannibal and then called Will up later to be like āoh gosh Iām real afraid of Hannibal and he threatened me if I told you you have encephalitisā or something. Even if he didnāt have any sort of Proof, all Will needed was medical care and a small prod in the right direction to have realized what was going on.
So Hannibal has to have something on him, something that meant Sutcliffe was already beholden to not break Hannibalās trust and that told Hannibal this was the sort of scheme heād go for
