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For a moment Hannibal had everything he could have ever wanted. Will was bloody and warm in his arms, face pressed against him. He had seen Hannibal; seen all of his monstrous brutality and called it beautiful, called what they did that night together beautiful. Will had pulled him closer and then pulled them both over the edge of the cliff. Hannibal didn’t fight it, he didn’t have a reason to. He pressed his face into Will’s shoulder and waited for them to hit the water.
When Hannibal doesn't die on impact he clutches onto Will’s body and drags him through the water to shore. He pulls him onto land and lays Will as softly as he can on the ground before laying next to him.
A bittersweet laugh leaves his lips.
“The stars are always so marvelous out here at night, so clear,” Hannibal says, and Will is silent beside him. Hannibal assumes he is too tired to speak, too hurt from the fall, or simply too stunned to say anything. And Hannibal smiles beside him, the only sounds being the waves and his shaky, loud breaths.
Only his breaths. He sits up and looks over at Will. A panic he hasn’t felt in years surges inside of him.
“Will?” Hannibal places two fingers on his neck, trying to find a pulse. He doesn’t. “Will?” He is growing desperate. He rips open the front of Will’s drenched shirt quickly, pulling all of his CPR knowledge from the depths of his brain, and starts with compressions. A part of him, the medical part, knows this is a fruitless attempt.
He keeps going, even though he knows he passed the point of no return. Hannibal’s arms are burning; from the pain of his wounds, from the impact of the water, and from repeatedly pressing his interlocked fists into Will’s chest. He only stops when he hears the snap of Will’s ribs beneath his hands.
An exhale leaves his lungs as he pulls his hands away from Will. The same exhale he remembers hearing with his patients before they would spiral into a sobbing mess. Hannibal’s vision is blurry when he looks down at his hands, red and bleeding. All he can think about is that his hands look how Will’s did that night he bandaged them.
There is no bandaging this.
Hannibal blinks rapidly as he looks down at Will, he still manages to look beautiful as a corpse. Tears run down his face as he leans to rest his head on Will’s chest. He sobs, because there is nothing else left to do.
When he finally pulls away and looks at Will again Hannibal knows what there is left to do; he has to eat him. His tongue feels heavy as he pulls Will into his arms, he remembers looking down at Will as he carried him away from Mason Verger and the surgeon knives. Will had felt warm then, Hannibal had pulled a coat over his body to make sure he stayed that way. Will feels cold now.
Carrying Will’s limp body back to his house is hard, but he knows what is to come next will be harder. He carries Will into his home, passing the body of the man they had killed together. He carries Will like a new husband would carry his partner, stepping through the threshold into their home for the first time as a wedded couple. He tries to push down that observation, stepping inside through the broken window. Walking over the shattered glass, what was left of his expensive wine, and their shared blood.
He lays Will down on his dining room table and looks at him, hoping for some miracle to occur and he will wake.
He doesn’t, and Hannibal knows it is childish to wish for something so far out of the realm of medicine. His hands know what to do, he can butcher a human body quite efficiently after all these years. But, for once, his mind doesn't. As he gathers his butcher knives, with shaky hands, all he knows is that he has to do this. He has eaten far more inferior men than Will, no one will ever surpass him.
Hannibal slowly removes Will’s wet shirt, trying not to remember the time he had done so to tend to Will’s bullet wound. He drapes the shirt carefully over the back of a chair, as if Will is going to come back for it. He removes his shoes and socks next, setting them carefully as well. When his hands find themselves going to undo his belt he pauses, out of all the times he has imagined doing so it was never in this scenario.
He almost wants to ask Will for his permission, he isn’t there to give it. Hannibal swallows down the feeling in his throat, not wanting to focus on whatever it is, as he slowly removes his pants. Normally Hannibal would strip a corpse naked before butchering them, it was easier that way, but he can’t do the same with Will. He leaves him in his boxers, some failed attempt at modesty.
The feeling comes back and he chokes on it trying to swallow it down, his vision blurs, and tears fall down his face. Hannibal stares down at Will’s body, butcher knife in hand, knowing he should say something to him, some parting words. He walks towards Will’s head, brushing a lock of hair from his face. For once Hannibal doesn’t think before he speaks- he doesn’t calculate his words, doesn’t care about their academic weight; he simply speaks.
“I’m sorry.” Is what leaves his lips. “This isn’t what you wanted, I know that.” Will had wanted them both to die. Will had told him earlier that he was beyond saving, if Will couldn’t save himself then he would bring Hannibal down with him. And Hannibal didn’t fight it, even though he could have, to die in Will’s arms would be the perfect way to go.
After all, Will would be the only one worthy enough to kill him. Hannibal brushes his thumb over Will’s forehead scar. “I have to do this. I hope you can forgive me, Will. As I have forgiven you.”
He can’t muster any more words. Hannibal should tell him he loves him, that he always has. But wherever Will is, he knows. Hannibal leans down and kisses his cold lips, softly. As he pulls away he almost hopes Will will come back to life, he doesn’t, Hannibal shakes his own ridiculous hope away. As he moves around the table he catches the glint of Will’s wedding ring, Hannibal slides it off Will’s finger. He means to pocket it, but he finds himself putting it on his own hand, having to force the slightly smaller ring over his knuckles. He doesn’t dare look at Will’s ring on his own hand.
He then walks to stand near the middle of his body, and finally raises his knife. Only to stop when he looks at Will’s stomach scar, he traces it with delicate fingers. After all the horror and pain he has caused Will, he still has to muster up the courage to make the first cut.
Hannibal knows how long butchering a corpse should take and it takes him almost twice as long with Will’s corpse, he wasn’t even this slow his first few times. He focuses on dissecting and carefully removing his organs as he works up his body. As much as he would want to be able to consume all of him, he knows he cannot bring himself to.
He slowly wraps and packages all his usable meat before surveying what is left of Will- his head, his hands, his feet, and what is covered by his boxers. Hannibal decides to leave Will’s brain untouched, he already tried to eat it before and failed. And besides, he has messed with Will’s mind enough- he should leave it to rest in peace.
Before Hannibal fully knows what he's doing he finds himself walking to his bedroom removing one of his pillows from his expensive silk pillowcases and then walks back out to Will.
Whatever Hannibal cannot stomach to eat he must bury.
He gently moves what is left of him into the pillowcase, grabs a shovel from the closet, and walks outside. He digs a shallow grave, gently removing and placing each body part into the dirt. Hannibal buries him, only now left with what he is going to consume. He sets the shovel beside where Will’s grave is, not caring about trying to hide where he is resting.
When he walks back inside Hannibal briefly wonders what will be said about what he is about to do. If the police find what is left of Will they will assume he ate him, maybe they will see the burial as remorse. Hannibal hopes that they will figure out he didn’t kill Will. He ponders if he should write a note and if they would even believe it.
Hannibal then transfers Will into his fridge, making a mental note of how long it will take to consume him. The emotions don’t rise in his throat again until Hannibal is placing his last piece in the fridge; Will’s heart.
He simply stares at the muscle, he cannot help the tears that well in his eyes, and he doesn’t try to stop them. Hannibal places what he hoped Will would give him one day, although not literally, into his fridge. When he closes it he collapses to the floor, finally remembering that he has open wounds that are bleeding.
He puts his head in his hands, not even noticing he is still dripping in Will’s blood. He only remembers when he can taste Will’s blood in his mouth, it’s sweet. Of course, it is.
Panic then slowly rises in Hannibal, this isn’t what Will wanted. Will wanted them to die in the water, together. He should have honored that, he should have dragged them both back out into the water, so he could die where Will wanted him to. For a split second Hannibal thinks about gathering everything he just spent hours butchering and burying, packing them away in a bag and going back out to the cliff. He even tries to get up, but his legs- weak from blood loss and exhaustion, don’t let him. Hannibal stays on his kitchen floor, sobbing like a child.
“What is wrong?” A voice shocks him into silence, it’s Will. Of course, it is.
Hannibal looks over and there Will is, sitting on the kitchen floor beside him. Looking how he looked earlier that night, before the blood and the violence, when things were easier. Hannibal knows it isn’t him, the real him anyway. But he aches so strongly he wants to rip his own heart out of his chest.
“I am not honoring you in the way you deserve.” Is all he can say. He wants to touch Will, hold him, kiss him, do anything. But he doesn’t. He simply stares at what he knows is a figment of his own imagination, something he has created to deal with his grief. If it wasn’t Will he would view it as pathetic.
“Is there a correct way to honor someone?” Will asks, a faint smile on his lips. Hannibal knows Will is just speaking what Hannibal's subconscious is telling him. “If you believe what you are doing is honoring someone, who's to say you aren’t?” He can’t hold Will’s eye contact anymore and turns away.
“This isn’t what you wanted.” He chokes out, sobs rattle his ribs and it shocks him that they don’t stop.
“Not everyone gets what they want, Hannibal.” Hannibal turns to look at Will and Will looks back at him sadly. For a second Hannibal begs for Will to be a ghost, even though he doesn’t believe in them. He begs for these words to be truly Will’s. Not words Hannibal’s imagination is forcing through his lips.
Then it finally hits him. How he will never hear new words from Will or feel that warmth inside himself whenever Will would enter a room. He knew Will was dead, but the weight of his death was finally sinking in. When his blurry eyes focus on where Will was beside him they find him gone.
Hannibal, somehow, manages to get to his feet and patches his wounds. He patches them lazily, not even bothering to remove the bullet. He only needs enough time to eat Will, which shouldn’t take him long. He doesn’t need time once he is finished.
Hannibal’s wet clothes have mostly dried, he is still covered in his, Will’s, and Francis’ blood. He stumbles into his wine cellar, grabs whatever bottle is first, and limps himself to bed. He doesn’t even bother to grab a wine glass. He drinks himself to sleep, for the first time in years he fears nightmares.
The first few meals he makes he tries to make them like he normally would, he plates them nicely and pairs them with a wine to match the flavors. Hannibal can stomach this. But as his fridge dwindles the more his stomach cannot.
He still puts the same care into cooking Will, but as he stares down at his current plate he cannot bring himself to take a bite. With each piece of Will he eats he is losing more and more of him. Soon he will be nothing but a ghost within his memory palace, the ring on his finger, and the scars on his wrists. He used to mentally refer to Will as the only living person to break his heart, Will has now joined Mischa.
Hannibal stops caring about his proper table manners. When he finally picks up his fork his elbows are on the table and he eats as a normal person would. Each bite is a hard swallow down his throat, Will tastes good- better than anything else he has ever tasted. But his meat still rises bile in Hannibal’s throat, he forbids it and pushes it down.
“Do I not taste good?” Will’s playful question causes Hannibal to look up. Will is sitting across from him, holding a wine glass incorrectly and sipping from it. Hannibal almost wants to correct him on how to hold it, but Will knows how to hold a glass properly. He is simply doing it to see what Hannibal will do. Hannibal shakes his head. “Then what do I taste like?”
“Heaven.” He says the word without thinking, without a long analogy, without pretension. His own description causes a sob from him. Hannibal knows he will die after this, there is nothing else left.
The fear swells in his mind that even in death he will not find Will again, that when the last bite is over he will have lost him forever. Hannibal is unsure that Will would even qualify for heaven, but compared to him, he is a saint. Hannibal knows there is a circle of hell dedicated to suicides, maybe he would find Will there.
His fork clatters to his plate and he cannot stop from pushing it away, placing his head in his hands. The table still smells like Will’s blood. Suddenly, what he knows is Will’s arms are around his neck, as if he were standing behind him. He doesn’t feel like flesh but warm air, and it chokes another sob from him. Maybe Will is a ghost after all.
“This isn’t fucking fair,” Hannibal snaps, unable to remember the last time he swore like this.
“In death, there is no fairness, no mercy. You of all people should understand that, Hannibal.” He lifts his head and looks up at Will, who is standing behind his chair with his arms draped around Hannibal’s neck. Wondering if Will had stolen his way of speaking when they fell, the thought of it almost makes him smile. Hannibal wants to touch him, but he knows it would render him a mess if his hand passes through Will.
“I lost my entire life, most of it my own doing. But at least I had you.” Hannibal explains. “Even if you weren’t near, or with someone else, I still knew you were out there, and thinking of me. You were my world, Will. And now you are gone. I am a man living in a world that is no longer fit to hold him anymore. My world left me, I must follow it.”
Will doesn’t try to talk him out of it. If this is Hannibal’s subconscious then he knows now he truly has made up his mind. If this is Will, as a ghost, then he wants him with him. Hannibal isn’t sure which hurts the most.
“Gone or not, I am always with you. As much as you have always been with me.” Hannibal meets Will’s eye contact again, he swears he can see tears in Will’s eyes.
“I loved you.” He cannot stop himself from saying so, tears breaking and rolling down his own face. “I love you, I always have.”
“I knew,” Will says. Warmth spreads across Hannibal’s face, which he registers as Will trying to wipe away his tears. “I know, on some level I always have.” Will doesn’t say he loves Hannibal too, which is probably for the better.
Will doesn’t need to break Hannibal’s heart one more time.
Hannibal stays like this until he feels the warmth of Will leaving him. He then finishes his meal, downs his wine unceremoniously, and stumbles off to bed. Hannibal swears that the bed feels warmer that night as if heat is radiating beside him. He doesn’t dare turn to see if Will is there.
Hannibal had planned to save Will’s heart for last, even when he considered eating him long before all of this, many years ago.
That morning Hannibal takes a shower, he didn’t care to take one until now. Finally cleaning himself of all the dried blood caking him. He picks the best suit that his closet offers, if Hannibal is to die tonight, and possibly reunite with Will, he has to look his best. Has to look his best when his body is found, wherever it may wash ashore.
Hannibal spends the most time and puts the most care into his heart, trying to prove to the muscle that he does love Will. He uses the best ingredients he has available, the fanciest recipe, pairing it with the most expensive wine- Will’s heart deserves no less.
For the first time, the smell of his dinner genuinely makes him hungry.
As he is setting his plate down at the table he realizes he grabbed two, he sets the second plate across from his chair anyway. A final invitation for Will. Hannibal pours himself his wine and leaves the bottle on the table as he walks over to the stove, bringing his last supper to the table. When he turns he is stopped in his motions, Will is standing by the table holding the wine bottle Hannibal had placed there, inspecting the label. If Hannibal wasn’t holding his heart on a plate he would genuinely believe Will was alive.
Hannibal walks over slowly, placing his- now possibly their, meal in the middle of the table. Hannibal watches Will hold the wine bottle, the actual bottle. Either he is hallucinating or ghosts can interact with objects. Will finally sets it down and walks to take his seat across from Hannibal as he sits as well. The sound of Will’s chair being pulled out makes Hannibal’s blood run cold.
“This is your final meal, isn’t it?” Hannibal slices into Will's heart and places a sliver onto his plate, and nods. “It seems that you didn’t use all of me,” Will says, there’s a playful hint to it.
“I would never stoop to the level of Mason Verger.” Will laughs, and it makes every bone in Hannibal's body ache. Will watches Hannibal eat, not taking food himself. After all, it is Hannibal’s last supper, and his alone, Will already had his. It takes Hannibal longer than it has ever for him to finish a heart. After finishing every small piece on his plate he has to pull himself back together. As the heart dwindles in size Hannibal slows his eating even further, soon he will be gone.
Hannibal flicks his eyes to Will before him and stays watching him as he places the final piece of Will in his mouth. Hannibal stares at Will as he swallows him down, seeing if he will vanish, he doesn’t. Hannibal’s shoulders drop, he is done.
A desperate, frantic mindset falls over him. Hannibal grabs the plate he had used to plate the heart on and moves it in front of him. He runs a finger over it, collects all the juices and sauce, and licks it off his finger. Hannibal does this until the plate is clean, not caring how uncivilized he must look. He does the same for his own plate, and it is clean as well. Hannibal realizes he should have done that with all the plates, that he should have licked his butcher knives clean, and consumed Will’s blood that coated his table.
Will had been watching this entire time, with inquisitive eyes. It only takes a second after Hannibal meets Will’s eye contact for Hannibal to rise from his chair abruptly, grab his bottle of wine, and start to head towards the cliff.
He can hear Will following him.
“What are you doing?” Worry lingers at the edges of Will’s words as Hannibal stops to pick up a couple of rocks, pocketing them. Their lightness will not help weigh him down, he knows this, he wants whatever FBI agent tasked with his body- he hopes Jack, to know exactly what he had done. The rocks in his pocket, Will’s wedding ring around his finger, his buried partial remains, the evidence in the kitchen, Francis’ rotting body- it should be enough evidence to paint a truthful picture.
Hannibal just looks back at Will as he stands near the edge of the cliff, taking a swig from his wine bottle, he wasn’t going to let such expensive wine go to waste.
“Hannibal,” Will says as if he is fearing Hannibal can no longer see or hear him. Hannibal sits near the edge and looks over at Will, who walks slowly and joins him.
Hannibal looks down at the water as he takes another swig. “Maybe I did die with you,” Hannibal says, as Will looks at him. “And this is my hell, my punishment. I will fall tonight and awaken on the shore beside your corpse. And I will have to repeat this for all eternity. Frantically trying to save your life, dismembering you, consuming you, mourning you, and then finally falling to be with you- over and over. If this is a good punishment I wouldn’t remember anything from the previous cycle. For all I know I could have been doing this my whole life.”
“If it was a punishment I wouldn’t be here,” Will says as he looks at Hannibal. For a second Hannibal wants to ask what he is- a ghost, a hallucination, his imagination, his memory palace bleeding into the real world, or a mix of all of them.
“Maybe that is what makes it punishment because I get to see you. But I can’t have you.” Will looks surprised at his words but looks out over the water. Hannibal begs to know if Will returned on his own or if he was simply a coping mechanism for Hannibal in his final days. In the end, it won’t matter, the outcome will be the same.
“Either way; Will, you are not a punishment.” Hannibal continues. “Even before all of this, you were the only good thing in my life.” Will looks back over at him, his eyes are apologetic. Apologizing for leaving, apologizing for not taking Hannibal with him the first time. However, his eyes don’t apologize for the fall and Hannibal respects that.
“What if you can’t find me?” Those words draw tears from Hannibal. He stares at Will, wanting to promise him he will always find him, but he cannot bring himself to lie to him. Hannibal has lied to him enough. He doesn’t know, truly, what awaits him when it all ends. All his extensive academic knowledge on religion could be wrong- there could be nothing or there could be life all over again. Will may truly go to a place Hannibal is not allowed to enter, due to his blood-stained hands. He does wonder if Will is stained enough to be denied entrance too.
“I truly do not know,” Hannibal says.
“Never thought I’d see the day you’d say that.” Will chuckles, somewhat bitterly.
Hannibal stares out over the water, finishing his wine. He catches himself trying to offer Will the bottle, he doesn’t, he wonders if he should have. Will looks over when he hears the bottle set on the ground, he scans Hannibal’s face. Instead of standing, Hannibal lays onto the ground where their bloodstains still are. He stares up at the night sky and sighs.
“I always liked coming up here,” he says. “The stars are so prominent.” Hannibal can hear Will lay down as well, but he keeps his eyes on the sky.
“I liked living in Wolftrap for that reason, one of many. My house was so far away from anything that on a clear day the sky would look just like this.” Hannibal wonders if they were ever both looking at the stars at the same time, both appreciating their beauty. “I would get a glass of whiskey and sit out on my porch with my dogs.”
Hannibal remembers Will telling him this, he smiles at first but it bleeds into tears. He can’t stop the picture of it from seeping into his mind. He and Will, together on their shared porch, drinking their choice of alcohol, with however many dogs Will desires around them. And simply looking at the stars. Hannibal almost chokes when he inhales a shaky breath.
Maybe in another life that is what they are doing. In a universe where things went easier, where things were not riddled by so much blood and scars, maybe Abigail would even be there. Hannibal smiles bitterly, he hopes that if there is another version of himself out there that the universe is kinder to him. That it is kinder to Will, kinder to Abigail, and Jack, and Alana.
When he finally looks over at Will he is now as bloody as he was during the fall. Almost as if he changed his appearance to make it accurate, to make it accurate when Hannibal returns things to how they should be, how they should have gone. He smiles as he sees the blood on Will’s face, finally able to appreciate how stunningly savage he looked that night.
“The stars really are marvelous out here. You were right.” Will says as he looks up at the sky, repeating the sentiment Hannibal had said on the shore when he thought Will was alive beside him. Hannibal looks back up at the stars as well, hoping that when he finally looks back to Will they are on the shore, and he is alive.
Hannibal suspends all his academic and medical knowledge and lays beside Will- ghost, hallucination, daydream, angel, or whatever else he is, pretending he is alive. He feels the warmth that he knows is Will’s hand on his own, and simply smiles, not caring anymore what he really is.
Will had come back to say goodbye, he had come back to allow Hannibal to say goodbye. And at that moment, both of them staring at the stars, that is all that matters to Hannibal.