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The frigid waters smoothed over, freezing until they were solid, encapsulating him whole.
Beyond the agony from his neck down, beyond the ice that engulfed him being so terribly cold that every nerve felt as though it were burning, the freezing wind attacked from behind. He bowed his head, a feeble attempt at shielding himself from the cold.
The concept of time escaped him, the barren land of ice robbing him of all senses that were not pain, until he could not even find relief in his own tears, for they, too, froze against his skin.
The area before him darkened, and an icy tear was plucked from his skin.
He looked up at last, risking the wind to behold the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
His pain was almost forgotten by the sight of him.
His savior and the reason for his damning, his comfort and his aggressor. His muse, his life, his love.
His precious mongoose.
His skin was pale, the robes that surrounded him long, black, and billowing in the frigid wind. Brown locks of hair were blown back, away from his face, revealing eyes that rivaled the ice itself, and scars of gold.
Scars of gold, like a teacup brought back together, a traditional art. Repaired, anew.
Chiyoh was with you .
“I remember when I first realized it was you.”
And the beauty was sucked from the moment, all except for the face of his beloved, leaving a hole in his heart, harsh and filling with the cold.
You devastating thing.
“I remember when I woke up for the first time afterwards. I was already institutionalized by then.”
For the first time, Hannibal wished to no longer hear him speak.
“You got a nice, cushy cell. Something warm, something elegant. I got cold brick and mushy food. Memories of an ear down my throat aside, I wanted to throw up every time I ate.”
He was shaking his head before even registering that he was moving. New tears formed where the old ones had been plucked away from his skin. Will crouched then, viciously plucking the newly frozen ones. Hannibal almost thought he would take his skin with them.
“And that’s not even mentioning the isolation. I once told you that abandonment requires expectation.”
Pluck.
“You gave me expectation, and each and every time, you tore it away.”
Pluck.
“And then you thought I would recover nicely.”
Pluck, pluck , pluck .
The tears didn’t stop, and he no longer knew who he was sobbing for. Himself, his own agony? The rare feeling of remorse? His darling Will, alone and afraid in a dark cage?
His actions were not things that he ever regretted. He did what he needed to, that was always true. The results of those actions, however, when it came to Will, could be things that haunted him. Plagued him. Things he was forced to face day in and day out, wondering how things would have gone otherwise. Wondering if he wouldn’t have had to go so long without seeing his face, without hearing his voice.
Wondering if Will would have trusted him.
“I wondered how much of my life I would even have left. Kade Purnell came to tell me that the death penalty was on the table. I had nightmares about being sent to the electric chair. That I was the one pulling the lever. Because it was my fault, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to trust you, and yet I did anyway. It was my fault for needing you when I knew I shouldn’t.”
He was no longer sure he could experience sensation that was not pain. Not ever again. The abyss in his chest grew, leaving him feeling emptier as it did.
He had truly believed that Will had spent those weeks filled with righteous anger, because that’s what had been presented to him. Even when he’d believed that Will betrayed him, he thought that was the reason why.
Will hadn’t told him about the pain, because he hadn’t trusted him anymore.
“I remember telling you how I dreamt of Abigail. I remember your little apology.”
Pluck.
“Your insistence that a place in my world could be made for her.”
His hand drew back. Hannibal longed for it to return, despite the pain it caused.
“You insisted that I had only seen part of her.”
And the ice cracked.
Splintering, it began to split apart, though he still felt as though he were frozen solid.
“That I had only seen part of her…That a place could be made for her…You were trying to tell me, weren’t you?”
Will’s hand shoved down into the cracks in the ice, searching until it found Hannibal’s arm. Grabbing with force that rivaled a god’s strength, he pulled upward, until at long last, Hannibal was no longer caged within the ice.
Hannibal fell to his knees then, legs burning against the ice, grappling at the base of Will’s robes. Will did not react. He stared downward at Hannibal, eyes filled with disappointment.
“I didn’t understand that you couldn’t go on without me. So you made me go on without you.”
Hannibal buried his face in the black fabric, his forehead pressed against Will’s thigh. He thought he could be cast into the mouth of the devil here, chewed and bitten as he’d consumed others, for his sin directly against his god.
Will’s hand raised for a moment, then lowered at last, gently raking through Hannibal’s hair.
“Still cold, I imagine…”
A single blink, and the ice was gone.
Still, he could not rise. Warmth descended upon him, paradise compared to the cold, and yet he was weighed down still, wrapped in a robe that he could not lift.
Will grabbed him suddenly, yanking him to his feet and beginning to move, forcing Hannibal to walk despite the weight.
“There are a lot of things you’ve done to me that you’ve been hurt by me doing to you. You’re insatiable in your capacity to think that you get to do anything you want.”
Hannibal marched onward, forcibly guided by Will, the weight of the leaden robes making his every muscle ache, still in agony from the tundra he was previously trapped in.
Will paused in his tracks then, still facing Hannibal. His hands slid up his arms, resting at his shoulders.
“Your hypocrisy isn’t even the worst of it.”
Will pushed the robes off, freeing Hannibal at last from the weight. He felt as though he could stretch at last, rolling his shoulders to test his mobility–
He hissed, a sharp pain descending upon his back.
“It’s the way you presented yourself. You found a way to pander to everything I desired, everything I feared.”
He pulled Hannibal forward again, this time by the wrist. Hannibal was helpless but to follow, the same sharp pain descending upon different parts of him, over and over and over again.
“You were almost… seductive in that way,” Will went on, ignoring the pain being caused. “You got what you wanted because you knew which buttons to push. You knew what you desired, and you found as many ways as possible to intermingle it with my own. You conjoined us in that way.”
Their path continued, the pain finally subsiding. Only then did Hannibal manage to turn his head, casting a glance behind him. He could not see any of the figures in the dark behind him, only the outline of their horns.
He shuddered.
His body was becoming used to the warmth, and perhaps that was why he so comfortably followed Will. Or perhaps it was a product of his own desperation, unable to detach himself from the man once he had him within his grasp.
Or was within Will’s grasp. He did not prefer one over the other.
He hadn’t noticed the way that warm was descending into hot, not until hot became scorching. His skin was vulnerable against burning sand beneath his feet, while Will didn’t seem affected at all.
He almost screamed when the raining flame came in contact with his skin.
Somehow, despite the angle, it had hit his stomach.
Will was upon him then, hands caressing his face through the agony.
"You better not be able to feel this," he muttered.
As if correcting his own weakness, he continued, his voice holding much more of a warning. “You better not be feeling this. Not when you yourself have put other people through worse. Elevated them to art, scorned God’s gaze as you did so. In fact, you compared yourself to him, compared your violence to his. You compared mine, too.”
Hannibal gripped onto his shoulder with one hand, his other coming to clutch at his burning stomach. He knew there was desperation in his eyes, he felt his own need. Will’s gaze did not falter from harsh neutrality.
“Big beast like you, hurting from this? I can’t even picture it.”
He could feel himself becoming increasingly unable to stabilize himself. The grip on Will’s shoulder was a lifeline. One of Will’s hands left Hannibal’s face, crossing between their chests to settle atop Hannibal’s hand on his shoulder.
“No, you’d better not be,” he reiterated. “Not with how much pain you’ve given other people before they die.”
And Will let go.
Hannibal stumbled back, falling into the scalding blood that was reserved for his type of violence. The fiery rain that had burned him moments before descended upon him and the blood, raising it to its boiling point.
He tried to scream, but the boiling blood entered his mouth, silencing him and burning his throat beyond use.
The same hand that damned him to the blood he’d spilt in his life reached into the boiling sea of viscera, grabbing him by his throat and once more pulling him out of his misery.
When he breached the surface, it was completely dark, and the scorching didn’t end.
In a pain-fueled fit of desperation, he was beating against the surface of whatever encased him, beating against the burning material in an attempt to break it down, to loosen it, whatever he could do to escape.
“You talk a lot about God for someone like you.”
The words echoed in his encasement, drowning out his screams as the fire set to the tomb made him feel as though his very skin was bubbling.
The tomb filled with a thick, viscous sea, leaving him to drown before the tomb was gone altogether.
He could not breach the surface this time, not due to the heat, but due to the weight. The heat was gone altogether, with nothing left but silent pain that contorted itself into silent rage for the sake of preserving his own sanity.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Will’s voice echoed through the murky waters, “and you wanted to surprise me.”
His chest ached once more.
“You’re not one for pain for pain’s sake. Yet you were that night. You were hurt, and you wanted me to be just as hurt as you, if not more. You scrambled for the control you’d lost. Where’d that get you, Hannibal?”
The sea drained at last, giving way to solid ground once more. The fluid drained from his lungs, allowing him to breathe again.
The sight of Will before him, as cruel as he was, was akin to seeing an angel for the first time.
He followed the holy light.
Will pulled him to his feet, though abandoned him to walk ahead. Hannibal moved to follow, only to be halted in his tracks by something large in his path that he couldn’t quite make out. He could not move to either side.
He pushed the weight, attempting to roll it across the ground as he followed his beloved.
“You’ve always been a greedy thing, haven’t you?” Will taunted over his shoulder. “You really did want me all to yourself. Anyone and anything in the way of that got what was coming to them, no matter the cost.”
Will turned away from him once more, continuing on ahead.
“I wonder, then, if you would’ve just killed Abigail anyway when you got sick of her getting my attention.”
At last, the weight fell into some murky substance, the force of his own push sending Hannibal tumbling into the vile slush himself.
He stood, knee deep in the disgusting concoction as icy rain fell upon him. Will, simply pulling his dark robes over his head, was largely unaffected.
“You know where I went. I was trying to find some answers, ones I could never get out of you. You couldn’t follow me, I knew that much. At first, I thought it was just because you couldn’t even face me. I know you heard me in the catacombs of that chapel, Hannibal.”
And he did. The faint melody of Will’s forgiveness, as bittersweet as it was, played through his mind like the gentlest symphony.
He couldn’t handle it, could he?
"You glut yourself on anything you crave, without a care for the consequences. Or maybe you relish in the consequences. It's still hard to tell with you, considering consequences to your actions are scarcely something you accept."
Hannibal stared at the icy eyes that enveloped him in their gaze, absorbing every word. Discomfort shrouded the sight of his beauty, but it was very possible that nothing in the bitter universe could render Hannibal unable to perceive that beauty.
"I wonder how many people, total, you've eaten."
Hannibal did not respond. He himself had long since lost count.
"You wanted to glut yourself on me," Will said, an edge of amusement to his voice. His hand lifted, his fingertips raking across the golden scar of his forehead.
The icy rain ceased at last, the slushy current dwindling.
And then the wind began.
He struggled to maintain his balance, eager to continue looking Will in the eye.
Will gave a wry smile as he continued to feel along his scar. His other hand came to his stomach, where the other scar, no doubt gilded as well, was hidden by his robes.
“I touched them, every now and then,” he said, his voice quiet as though he were admitting the greatest sin. “When I needed to remember you. When I…” He swallowed, then corrected himself. “When I wanted to remember you.”
No matter the harshness of the wind, he would not allow himself to be parted from Will by yet another torment.
Not now. Not again.
“I think, uh…” he began, his mouth twisting into a sardonic, pained grin. “I think Molly thought I was self-conscious of it. She kept sweeping my hair down over it. I think she thought it was hurting me, somehow.”
A brief silence, and only then was Hannibal able to see the tears in Will’s eyes.
“Or,” he continued, his voice beginning to tremble, “she just thought it was ugly.”
A sharp twinge to his heart, those words. Will? Rendered ugly by anything? It was impossible, and yet that wretched, foul woman had made him feel that way. He wanted to peel her flesh from her bone, to show her just how capable she was of unspeakable ugliness.
“You didn’t think that, did you?”
A resounding pause.
“No. You would’ve thought that it…added to me. Another brush stroke on a painting, or something like that.”
Yes.
Yes, he did.
A brush stroke didn’t begin to describe it. Anything, everything that was a part of Will was sculpted with the finest gold Heaven had to offer, fallen angel or not.
“Your sense of desire,” Will went on. “The entire premise of it…You desire so deeply that you’ll throw everything else away for the sake of it. I hadn’t thought you capable of it, to crave, to yearn like that. It all felt too gentle for you.”
Too gentle it was.
“But that’s why you’re not gentle about it, are you? You don’t just desire. You lust .”
All too quickly, the whipping winds finally swept him away, and he found himself reaching out for a man who did not reach back.
“You lusted after me in several ways, each more intense than the last. You refused to allow anything to be in the way, including anyone else in my life. I was always in more control than I ever thought I was, because I was in your head even more than you were in mine. You had to even the score, make sure the only voice in my head was yours.”
He remembered his grasp on his life slowly slipping out of his fingers in the presence of Will. Will was a wild thing, a spitfire that refused to be put out by any force. Will’s chaotic nature seeped into those around him, whether they knew it or not. Hannibal had the misfortune of becoming aware of it, unlike the others, though by the time he did, it was far too late. His typically perfect control had already left his grasp, and he spent months on a downward spiral.
He scarred Will’s stomach. He killed their daughter. He killed without reason in Florence. He allowed himself to be beaten within an inch of his life in his grief. He turned away from Will’s forgiveness, and was almost met with Will’s blade as penance. He scarred his forehead, intending to kill them both; Will by being consumed, and himself by the ensuing disease.
He slaughtered for him, to save him. He carried him for miles in the freezing snow, holding his unconscious body like it was the most precious thing to exist, because he was . He tucked him in, he waited for him to wake.
He was rejected. He did not accept it.
He waited for three years, terrifying those around him with thinly veiled threats and reminders of his effect on their lives.
And he waited.
And oh, when Will looked at him again, it was as though there wasn’t a single other soul on this planet except for them…
…and his wife .
“You couldn’t take that someone was keeping me from you. That’s the real reason you sent him after her, didn’t you? You wouldn’t be so crude as to risk the life of a literal child, you weren’t thinking about Wally at all. It was all about her.”
It was all about her.
“Jealous thing you are.”
The words were said with far more affection than he’d earned, and the winds stopped, dropping him at last on the ground before his keeper.
The environment around them, dark as it was, transformed once more. As opposed to the torment he’d received, this landscape was undoubtedly peaceful. Dark and foggy as the terrain remained, there was soft grass beneath them both.
And yet, Will looked pained.
“I didn’t think you were capable of love. That’s how fucking stupid I was.”
The shift in tone was jarring, Will directing his anger at himself. It made Hannibal want to reach out to him, to console, to soothe, and yet he found himself incapable of moving at all.
“Here I’ve been, just…recounting everything. Getting it all out while you can’t even respond. Because it’s easier to be angry when I can’t hear you. Because I know that the second I hear your fucking voice, I won’t be able to hate you.”
Oh, dear thing…
Will crouched in front of him then, his eyes brimming with tears that threatened to spill over.
“Because the second you look at me again, I’ll have to realize that I’ve loved you just as much.”
The confession was beyond anything holy, anything divine. It was a soothing balm, spread with gentle, loving hands over every wound he had ever received. He felt as though he were floating, the pure joy that cascaded through him.
The joy was shattered when Will gripped onto his arm, sobbing with all the grief of a widow.
“I love you,” he said, and it sounded more like a beg. “I love you…Please, don’t leave me…”
Hannibal, at long last, was able to embrace him, pulling him close to himself.
Only then did he realize they were no longer in peaceful terrain, but the aftermath of chaos. The aftermath of their consummation.
Will, equally as bloody as him, clung to him desperately, weeping into his shoulder as though Hannibal wasn’t there at all.
I’m right here, my love.
I’ve got you, I’m right here.
Why can’t you hear me?
Will’s quiet, sobbing pleas continued, as Hannibal glanced over him and towards the cliff…
…that they’d already fallen off of…
Into frigid water.
Ice.
Weighted robes.
Burning sand and fire. Boiling blood.
Flaming tomb.
The waters of Styx.
Horrible weight.
Slush and rain.
Raging winds.
Limbo.
Life.
Life .
Life .
…
..
.
.
.
The near blinding light was a welcome blessing as his eyes finally fluttered open. Feeling very much like he’d been in a vehicular accident, he gave himself some time to come back into existence.
His breathing was slightly labored, but otherwise fine. His body ached, but not oppressively so, which he was sure was a miracle. His arm–
He looked to the side, seeing Will tightly hugging his arm, head tucked down onto his bicep, sobbing, and he felt his heart split in two.
Testing his movement, he lifted his free arm, delighted to discover that he could do so without too much strain.
“Will,” he rasped, cupping the side of his face with his free hand.
Will shot up with a gasp, startled, looking at Hannibal as though he was staring at a ghost.
And then he was sobbing again, descending onto the man and crying out his name.
Hannibal couldn’t help the smile that came to him as Will towered over him, holding onto him and pressing kisses to his head. Aching or not, he felt as though he could live in that moment for centuries to come and never tire of it.
Will pulled back, wiping his eyes and stumbling over apologies, thinking that he’d exacerbated the man’s wounds.
Hannibal smiled still, taking both of Will’s hands in his own.
“Will, my love,” he assured, “you could never hurt me.”
It took Will nearly ten full minutes to settle down properly, his relief and his grief intermingling in the worst ways. Hannibal was as patient as ever, not one to shy away from comforts, and absolutely unwilling to let Will go in that moment.
At long last, Will settled, the bed very fortunately big enough for him to be closely pressed against Hannibal’s side. His face was still stained with tears, which Hannibal did his best to gently wipe away.
“How long were you left alone, my love?”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have spoken at all, because whether it was the gentleness of his voice, the term of endearment, or hearing his voice at all, Will looked ready to cry all over again, pressing his face into Hannibal’s shoulder.
“Two weeks,” he said. “You’ve been in a coma for two weeks.”
That…actually seemed relatively reasonable, all things considered. If he remembered correctly (though details were certainly hazy), he’d been injured enough for that to happen, and that wasn’t outside the usual length of time for a recoverable coma. Especially after–
…Oh.
He looked down at Will, who still had his face tucked firmly into Hannibal’s shoulder.
Oh, darling…
Hannibal raked his fingers through Will’s hair, urging him to look up once more.
“You haven’t killed me yet,” Hannibal lightheartedly assured, giving him a soft smile.
Will hardly seemed convinced. “What if I had?”
“In that case,” Hannibal replied, “I would go through Hell and back to see you again.”
Will relaxed finally, easing into his hold.
And Hannibal was in paradise at last.