Chapter Text
The woods are dark, darker than they were before. The sun has disappeared beyond the far-away castle, and around them, the shadows of branches stretch like grasping fingers on monstrous arms. Their stalwart pony finds his footing, hoof by careful hoof.
Will decides his name is Winston, named for a friend he knew long ago.
The Prince sits snug against Will’s back, not stiff and regal like before. Their bodies fit together, warm as a blanket and just as soft, and their hearts beat in time with each other. Hannibal’s sword is sheathed so he can better keep hold of Will, and Will knows that he will hold him after this, too. They will share kisses that make the sun seem brighter. They will share hugs that last until they laugh.
And they will laugh, often. That, Will knows with certainty.
“Is it weak if I tell you I’m scared?” the Prince asks. “More scared than I’ve ever been, hunting any other boar in these woods.”
Will gives the question consideration, and finally shakes his head.
“No,” he answers. “It takes courage to admit that, just like it takes courage to do what’s right. If you didn’t feel anything, you’d be akin to the boar. He can’t know fear because he doesn’t know love. And you have to love something to be afraid to lose it.”
Hannibal smiles against his shoulder, and already feels less afraid. “You’ll be a good prince,” he tells Will, and Will’s cheeks blossom warm at his words.
He has never thought himself a prince, nor a pauper. Will has always just been Will, with his love for animals and all things green, rich chocolate and too-ripe berries. He wonders if Hannibal is right, and he will be a good prince. Or if he will simply be a boy, living in a new home.
What makes a prince a prince?
More than a castle, of that Will is certain.
He can feel Hannibal’s arms tighten around him as they ride closer and closer to the den of the beast once more. The same cloying smell, and reek of fresh blood. The same emptiness and terrifying silence.
Will thinks of their laughter again, of their smiles and the things they will do together, two princes in a palace of their own. It helps make the silence easier to bear, knowing it will be filled.
No voice greets them this time, no teasing and no laughter. No heavy filthy breath and frightful white coat. The boar is not here.
The pony's steps are uneasy as their hearts, each mud-soft clop moving thicker and heavier as they near the clearing. There is blood dried brown across the grey dead grass, where Hannibal cut through the boar's flat snorting nose. With the sun evading them moment by moment beyond the horizon, the woods shiver in the wind, as chill as the two boys on their horse.
"Perhaps we should wait," suggests the Prince. "Perhaps until morning."
It's Will this time who is as ardent as Prince Hannibal was before. "He'll hunt then, he may be hunting now."
More children hurt, snatched from warm beds and families who love them. More children whose sobs will be silenced, their bodies made motionless with fear. No, they must press on. It must end tonight.
"Go," the Prince says, as if he can hear Will's thoughts - as if he can feel Will's heart beat harder where his hand presses to Will's chest. "Go and we will find him, and tell him that we aren't afraid anymore."
The blood smears, then drips, then all but disappears, the deeper they go into the dying forest. Around them hang limp branches and heavy cobwebs, things left behind by the fleeing creatures that once thrived here and made this forest grow. The air is heavier here, and they both grow sleepy with it, rubbing their eyes and shaking their heads to stay awake. Hannibal nods against Will and gently he wakes him up again.
It is a trick, a cruel trick of the sick forest and the creature within it. It isn’t real if they don’t let it be.
“He is a coward to hide in his lair,” Will whispers. “Not even anger will drive him out, not even pride. We are already stronger -”
“You brought a friend this time,” the voice sneers from behind them, around and above them. Will wheels the little pony around but they see not a trace of white bristle, not a flicker of a tail. “Two foolish boys here, for me to properly enjoy.”
It's a very dangerous magic that makes their limbs so heavy. Will has seen it before, when a boy or girl eats or drinks something enchanted. He's tried to wake them, to no avail. Will can only imagine that those who sleep through their demise, speared by the boar's horrid tusks, are the lucky ones.
He clutches Hannibal's arm as the Prince begins to slip, and shakes him as the pony turns in circles.
"Hannibal," Will whispers. "Prince, wake up!"
He stirs, dark eyes blinking slow beneath his tousled golden hair. Will meets his gaze, turned nearly sideways on his horse, and he clasps Hannibal around his middle.
"Stay with me," he says. "I need you."
The words are like a splash of cold water, and Hannibal narrows his eyes, jaw set hard. He reaches for his sword but does not draw it. He doesn't need it.
He has Will.
"Show yourself, cowardly pig!" the Prince cries out loud, his voice swallowed into the thick air.
"Coward?" answers the boar. "Coward? That isn't very nice of you. You who ran from me. You who tries to outnumber me now. She ran too, you know. It made her taste all the sweeter for it."
"Mischa did not run," the Prince declares. Will has heard Hannibal say the name before in his sleep. "She never would. She did not fear you, and neither do we!"
“You all run,” the boar promises. “All little children get scared, all little children start to cry. And oh those tears, sweet silky tears -”
“You hide behind your darkness and your cave, your magic and your size but you are more scared than any of us,” Will calls to him, his voice not as strong as it had been - he, too, is growing sleepy. He, too, feels that call to just lie down and let it happen. Because how bad could it be, truly? Just a second of pain and then nothing else. No responsibilities, no fears, no growing up and growing old… just calm nothing.
It’s so tempting, with everything he’s lost.
“You are scared because you have no one,” he says, as the boar's bristles rattle in reminder. He too has been alone. He too has had no one.
But the warmth of Hannibal against his back is a greater security than the peace of sleep that would come after pain. Will isn't alone, not anymore. He is loved, and allowed to love in turn. And when Hannibal dismounts the horse, Will goes with him. Embarrassed by his fear, but finding strength in Hannibal, Will takes his hand.
Ashamed of his doubt, but finding certainty in Will, Hannibal slides their fingers together.
"You could face one of us, alone - you may even defeat us," Hannibal says, turning slowly to seek through the columns of black-trunked trees for a flash of sickly white. "But you can't harm us together."
"Talk, talk, talk," snarls the boar, as both boys stumble back and their pony jolts aside beneath a spray of dark soil. They keep their hands together, squeezing firmly, as the boar stands above them. Its stinking breath pools hot and thick around their faces. Saliva drips sticky from its jaws. Half its nose cut free, the boar's snout is a malformed hole, and beyond its maw and tusks, beady blue eyes narrow, pale as ice. "I'm going to enjoy hearing you two weep. Will you cry for me now? Or must I make you?"
Will closes his eyes, breath coming in short bursts as the boar strokes a tusk along his cheek, the bony dagger of it taller than his head.
"Two boys with no family to speak of. Two boys that no one will miss. Two boys that no one loves and whose tears no one will hear but the other."
Hannibal makes a sound, not in fear but in anger, and clasps Will’s hand tighter. They shift around so they’re back to back, eyes on the boar no matter where he moves.
“Our families may have gone but we have made our own with each other,” he calls out. “He has me and I have him and we are not alone!”
“One of you will leave,” the boar coaxes. “One of them always does. One by one by one everyone trips down the hill and away from the castle, don’t you see, Prince? They leave you. They leave because of you. And he will as well.”
“I will not!” Will says, holding his sword in one hand and Hannibal’s hand in the other. “I will not leave him, because I love him. I will be there to wipe his tears away, should they come, you will not get a single drop!”
With a roar of shrieking piggish laughter, the boar snorts his delight. His breath smothers them, like hands pushed over their noses, like blankets pressed into their mouths. The sickly squish of mud spreads beneath his hooves. His bristles shiver over unyielding muscle as if they were icicles, deadly sharp.
"She screamed for you," the boar snarls at Hannibal.
"Because she loved you until the end,” Will whispers.
"Your father abandoned you," laughs the boar, circling to Will instead.
Hannibal reaches back to grasp his fingers, to remind him that he's there. In a low voice, the Prince tells Will, "He never would. You were tricked, you know that, not left behind. You were lost because you trusted. Because your heart is good."
Will frowns at the boar but doesn't waver. The Prince's words - like sun - pierce the boar's icy chill. The great beast shrieks displeasure, anger, hate. His hooves drive furrows into the earth. His clashing tusks throw sparks to the blackened sky.
"What good has this Prince ever done for you! Safe in his castle, far away. Why did so many suffer while he was safe?"
Will swallows hard and makes his voice harder too. He speaks with steel sharper than his blade. "What happened before matters little, so long as what we do now is right."
"And you," roars the creature, his bristles cracking, melting to water beneath the warmth of their words. "Little Prince. What good to you is a worthless boy like Will? Useless and broken, used and filthy."
"What happened before matters not at all," Hannibal says. "A good heart can be sullied by no man nor pig, but only by our deeds."
“You’re naive!”
“I will learn,” Hannibal says.
“You’re too young.”
“I will grow,” Will replies.
“You are only as good as what we tell you you are!”
“You’re wrong!” they both yell.
There is a spark, like a twitch of a lighter, and Will turns into Hannibal’s embrace and holds him, ducking his head against his shoulder as Hannibal does the same. Around them come the screams, the shrieks and sobs and cries of little children in pain, finally released from the bowels of the creature holding their souls captive. Around them falls a sudden rain, warm and clean and heavy, of tears that wash away the filth the boar has brought into the forest, slicking leaves green once more, washing the dirt and dust from the ground to reveal the forest floor below.
Before them shrieks a creature tiny and weak, dirtied by mud and held back by its own fear of them. No more cruel words come from him, no more savageries lash them like whips and leave scars on their skin. Just a runty piglet, squealing in his fear and displeasure, foot caught in a long stem of grass at the edge of a meadow.
Hannibal’s eyes sharpen. He loosens his arm from around Will’s shoulders, and holds his hand instead. As he steps closer to the little pig, pale but pinkening from frigid white, he lifts his blade.
And he blinks, as Will stops him with a hand against his wrist.
“We must be better than he was,” Will says. He has heard from the market the screaming of piglets, so much like the pained and fearful noises of children. He has heard them, too, silenced. “He’s helpless now, and small.”
“And he could grow to become evil again.”
“What happened before matters little, so long as what we do now is right,” Will tells the Prince. “If he knows kindness instead of cruelty, love instead of hate…”
“We can break the spell,” Prince Hannibal says, “and perhaps he’ll grow to be good, instead.”
He lowers his sword as Will crouches, to free the little pig from his snare. Cradling the creature against his chest, he laughs when it snorts and puffs against his throat, and the shadows recede from the forest, brightened by the joy in his voice. Prince Hannibal watches them both, and his anger softens, that darkness too giving way to love. He spreads his fingers through Will’s hair, and grasps his curls.
“Will,” Hannibal says, his voice deeper now, resonant and warm. He withdraws his hand and folds his fingers in front of him. “Are you unwell?”
Will blinks his eyes open, having fallen asleep at his Thai practice, pen still in hand, trailing a twitching line against the page. He watches Hannibal from beneath his curls, feels a little too hot and wonders if maybe he is sick. Around him, the early evening sun outlines him against the kitchen and the smooth wall, and Will knows he merely fell asleep when he got warm, and didn’t move when he got hotter. He smiles, just a little, and presses a hand to his face to stifle a yawn.
Before him, the work unfinished but well drawn before sleep took hold of him, Will has copied diligently the words for farm animals over and over on his paper. He’d stopped on hog.
“When did you come home?” he asks softly.
“Only a few minutes ago,” Hannibal tells him. He lifts his hand to stroke sun-hot curls again, and looks over Will’s shoulder at his work. The script is legible and accurate, but more of interest are the little characters outside his study. Stick figures with swords and black-leafed trees, a pig and a horse of equal size.
Will notices at the same time as Hannibal, and slyly, slowly slides his folded arms over his paper to hide his secret story. With a hum, and a gentle pat, Hannibal does not pry, but steps away to allow Will his privacy. Returning to the small kitchen, he begins to set away the groceries. “Next time we go to the store, we might find softer pencils and a more agreeable notepad.”
“No,” Will says, shyly. “It’s fine.”
“It is,” Hannibal agrees. “I enjoy sketching too, though it’s been years since I’ve had the time. Perhaps we may sit together and do so, if it would please you.”
Will’s cheeks flush in delight and he swallows before nodding. He would love to see Hannibal draw, as calm and precise and lovely in that as he is in cooking, as he is when he folds their laundry and lets Will help, as he is when he writes Will’s Thai practice on a sheet for him to work on. Will shifts in his seat and stretches long and hums before curling his arms beneath his cheek and smiling at Hannibal.
“Do you dream when you sleep?” Will asks, and Hannibal pauses before offering an answer.
“Sometimes. I’ve told you about some of my dreams, do you remember?”
“Yeah,” Will says, pushing himself to sit up, folding the pages carefully to hide his silly stories. It felt so real, every single moment in the meadow and the scary forest, every scream and howl and all the awful words stinging like nettles. He had woken up feeling Hannibal’s hand in his own, still. “Do you think any of them will come true?”
Hannibal never answers quickly, unless there is obvious reason to do so - an injury or a fright, or when they’re practicing with their rubber knives. He considers the question and hums, and Will hides his smile to hear the sound of it.
“I believe that if the dream is something desirable, then we should use it to guide our actions and decisions both. And if the dream is one that is unpleasant or frightening, we should learn from it, and make effort to disallow it from becoming reality.”
Will is grateful that Hannibal doesn’t pry or press; he isn’t sure he could make himself tell Hannibal what he dreamed, when it seems so childish in waking. But Hannibal’s words now warm him, as did the Prince’s words in his dream. Love and bravery, a family and a home of their own to share. Hannibal lifts his eyes from where he lays out their dinner, meeting Will’s gaze before Will turns away again with a grin.
“Come,” says the Prince, and Will’s cheeks warm even more. “Clever Will, we will work together.”
Will grins, ducking his head before he slips from his seat and trots around to the other side of the counter to accept the sword handed to him by his brave Prince. They may be vanquishing vegetables, but they are doing it together.
As they will do everything, Will is sure. Because he promised, and he always keeps his word.