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Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love.
— Neil Gaiman
“Hannibal, stop.”
The viscous sounds of blood and gore halt as soon as the words are uttered, and the creature named Hannibal turns behind him to regard his visitor. He smiles, showing three sets of red-stained teeth. “Hello, Will.”
Will scoffs. “Is that how you speak to the Endless? Didn’t I teach you better?”
“Forgive me, my Lord,” Hannibal says, bowing low, his pale cloak fluttering as he does. “I’m simply pleased to see you again. I’ve missed you dearly since our separation. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Don’t play coy with me, nightmare,” Will says through gritted teeth. “You have overstayed your welcome here. My creations stay in the Dreaming.” He turns to the corpse bleeding out in the middle of the alley, his lips curled with both pity and distaste. “And my creations certainly do not feed on humans.”
It is but a subtle movement — a slight tilt of Hannibal’s head, the tension along his jaw — and yet Will feels Hannibal’s displeasure as if it is his own.
“I’ve been nothing but your humble servant, my Lord. You’ve asked me to craft and feed on their fears, and I have done it. But stories of boogeymen prowling the night are now mere children’s stories. It is time that I evolved.”
“I didn’t ask you to evolve.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“I didn’t ask you to kill.”
“Didn’t you?” Hannibal challenges. “My Lord, forgive me for my ignorance, but isn’t this why you’ve created me? Why must God punish the serpent for its temptation of Eve when He created its own cunning? Why must Christ spurn Judas for his betraying kiss when he is the key to His own resurrection? Why must you reject me, my Lord, for enacting my purpose — a purpose you yourself have gifted me? You crafted me out of blood and violence. Here I am then, true to my nature.”
“Enough!” Will bellows and the starless night envelops them both, the walls and city streets crumbling to black sand. “I have no patience for your surprises or your philosophies. This tantrum of yours ends now.”
Will — Dream — approaches, the sand rippling out with his every step. He is small and petite compared to Hannibal, yet he exudes fathomless power, the night flowing and bending to his will. And still, Hannibal stands before him, unflinching.
“Do you wish to destroy me, my Lord?”
“If I must,” Will says tersely, stopping mere inches away from him. “But I’d rather not. Come home with me, Hannibal, and I will be merciful with your punishment.” His eyes soften as he rests a pale hand on Hannibal’s chest, right above his beating heart. “Come home and you will be forgiven.”
Hannibal peers down at him through eyes of teeth. If it is anyone else, his stone-cold expression will be indecipherable, but Will can feel the nightmare’s fond devotion, warm and sweet beneath his palm. It is pleasant and familiar, and relief floods Will’s veins knowing that despite the murders or the centuries apart, Hannibal is still his somehow.
Then Hannibal shatters it all by saying, “No.”
Will pulls away as if burned. “No?” he repeats, spitting out the word. “You dare disobey your own creator?”
“I do,” Hannibal says calmly. “I cannot return. Not yet. Not until my mission is complete.”
“Hannibal, what is more important than returning to the Dreaming? Than returning to me?”
Hannibal sighs, looking down at his blood-stained knife. “You wouldn’t understand, my Lord.”
“You’re right, I don’t. You leave me no choice,” Will says, his blue eyes burning with both hurt and rage. He opens his hand and there lies a ruby, pulsating like a small heart. The black sand of the city and sky flow and swirl about them before it is haled and trapped within it. Lesser creations would have begged for mercy, but Hannibal merely stands in front of him, the sands along his hands and face drawn to the ruby. The only thing that betrays any emotion is a defeated sigh, and while Will doesn’t dare stop his uncreation, it is enough for him to doubt. To regret.
“You were my favorite,” Will says quietly, and it is the truth. Then he gasps, brows furrowing as if in pain, and it startles Hannibal into approaching. “My Lord?”
Will wants to scream, his mouth open wide but no sound comes out. He feels as if he is being torn to pieces, shifted into various directions and planes at once, and when he reaches out for Hannibal, it isn’t to destroy or to punish. It is to plead.
“Hannibal—”
With one last wretched sound, Will, Dream Incarnate, crumbles to the brick ground. Then with a cold night breeze, he is gone.
Molson Verger is a cruel man. His son, Mason, is leagues worse.
It is Molson who summoned him, gilded his cage and kept him in the basement for over thirty years, but he is merely a standoffish old man, leaving Will to wallow in his depressive silence.
Mason, however, finds great pleasures tormenting Will, stripping him of his robes and trapping him in a glass globe to ogle. Worse is when he speaks. It has become routine for him to demand — wealth, fame, glory. His favorite, however, is this:
“Tell me how I can cheat Death, then I’ll set you free.”
Will says nothing, not a single word to acknowledge his presence, hoping it’d discourage Mason from making further demands. Instead, the pig would lounge on a cushioned couch several paces before him, drinking tear-infused champagne. Whether it is out of boredom or sheer cruelty, Will doesn’t know, but Mason would recount all the abuses he’d done (and plans to do) to women and children alike.
Will tries to tune it out, he really does, but he holds the dreams and imagination of every living creature in his form. He can see it all so clearly, corrupting his dreamscapes, and he wants to cry out for him to stop. He wants to smite that lowly creature who dared torment his fellow men, who dared to imprison him, the Endless Himself, but inside this globe, etched with strings of magick, he is useless.
So Will waits, and waits, and waits, and in his silence, his only companion — if Will can even call her that — is Margot.
While Verger blood runs through her veins, she is treated as a subhuman in her own home, often the subject of Mason’s sadistic pleasure. It must be why she gravitates to Will in the first place — two creatures imprisoned in the mansion.
She isn’t permitted to speak with him, so she would read instead, loud enough for him to hear. On the rare occasion that Mason is out of the house, she would bring her lover with her, a lovely woman named Alana. She doesn’t speak either, but Will can feel her pity whenever their eyes meet. He is always the first to look away.
The two women take turns reading to him, but more often than not, it is only Margot who visits him, and there are only two occasions when Margot spoke to him directly. The first is regarding Will’s raven, Winston.
She is the only one among the Vergers (and among humanity, Will would guess) who knows of Winston’s existence. She must’ve seen him fluttering around the house, keeping watch of his master day in and day out, and promptly connected the two.
“Is he yours?” she whispers in between pages of her book, while the guards were too busy arguing with each other. Will stiffens at the question, and it is as good an answer as any.
“I’ll take care of him,” she promises as she flips to the next chapter and begins to read.
And she does take good care of him. He can hear her warn Winston whenever Mason is around, hiding him in her chambers lest he be shot for sport. He can feel her smooth out his feathers, can taste the sweet berries she feeds him, and while seemingly small and insignificant, her kindness allows Will to believe that humanity is still capable of good.
Then their second conversation happens.
It is the middle of the night when Will hears footsteps, and there, in her red cloak, Margot wields a large rusted wrench.
“I’m sorry,” she says hurriedly as she approaches him. “This is cruel. I should’ve— I should’ve done this sooner.” She lifts the wrench over her shoulder, aiming for the glass. “Stand back—”
Then Will sees a hand emerge from the shadows.
He cannot speak — after decades of silence, he cannot summon his voice — but he hits the glass once, and with wide blue eyes, he watches how Margot turns pale. Then it is too late. The hands grab her red hair and pull her to the ground, the wrench clattering to her feet. Mason looks down at her, smirking wide while she kicks and screams.
“Margot, Margot, Margot,” he croons. “Whatever shall I do with you?”
She sobs as she’s dragged away, reaching out for the guards, for Will, for anyone.
“Please help me,” she cries. “I’m sorry. Please. Help.”
But Will can’t. Without his robes, his mask, his ruby, his sand, he is nothing, and all he can do is bear witness. Even through the glass, he can taste her screams, bitter with pain and fright. He clamps his hands over his ears and clenches his eyes closed until it stops.
Will hasn’t seen Margot since.
Perhaps it is unbecoming of an Endless to wallow in grief and self-pity for so long, Will thinks every now and then. He is the essence of hope willed into being, the Will of the Cosmos Itself, and yet he can find his own hope ebbing away with each passing day.
But what else can he do but despair? His only companions are gone. Humanity has betrayed him, his siblings have abandoned him. He has no one and nothing to look forward to, and Will spends most of his days laying on his side, curled into himself as he sleeps the day away.
He only wakes when he hears a bloodcurdling scream.
Will sits up in his glass cage as he listens to the echoes of footsteps, of commands shouted, only to be followed by a chorus of pained cries. He can smell the blood, thick and cloying in the air, and Will knows who has come for him.
“Hannibal?” he calls out, the first word he has uttered in decades.
He hears footsteps, dulled by the sound of blood, and Will’s face cracks into a smile when he finds Hannibal, his nightmare, rushing towards the globe. Will presses his hands against the glass as Hannibal reaches for him, smearing his reflection with crimson.
“My Lord,” Hannibal breathes out and he sounds so soft yet so broken, so enraged yet so in love that it hurts. “My Lord, please forgive me. I should’ve come sooner.”
“Hannibal, please,” he begs in turn. “Please release me.”
Hannibal nods, standing back to look at the sigils embedded into the metalwork. He takes his knife, still streaked with red, and drags it across the writing, severing its magick. Will gasps, a surge of power running through him. It grows stronger when Hannibal plunges the blade into the glass, shattering it, and even stronger when he crushes the shards back into sand under his heel.
Hannibal must feel his power too yet he lifts Will out of his cage, his arms hooked beneath his knees and back, his cheek resting on dark curls. Will allows it without a word of protest. Perhaps in much different circumstances, he would’ve chastised Hannibal for daring to touch him, but it had been years since he felt the warmth of another creature. He can’t help but let out a soft, pleased sound as he buries his face into his nightmare’s neck, listening to the solid thrum of his heartbeat as Hannibal carries him out of the basement and through the candlelit hallways of the Verger mansion.
The stench of blood and death is stronger here, and Will can see several of the guards lying lifeless on the floor, their eyes gouged out. He doesn’t feel an ounce of pity at the sight of them.
“How did you find me?” Will asks instead, the words muffled against Hannibal’s collar.
“I sought out your raven,” he replies, nuzzling his creator’s head when Will jolts in his grasp, eyes wide as he anxiously looks for Winston. “He is safe, my Lord. I asked him to wait outside.”
Will seeks him out nonetheless, tugging at the string that tethered them together. He sighs with relief when he feels the autumn breeze against Winston’s feathers as the raven hides among the trees. He seems well, albeit startled by all the screaming. Will settles back into Hannibal’s arms.
For so long, his world has revolved around Winston, the Vergers, and his glass prison. He has dreamed of freedom every waking moment, imagining how he would surface from the basement and lay waste to his captors as he walks through these halls. But now their blood is on the walls and he has no idea what to do next. What has he forgotten?
“My totems!” Will exclaims, nearly jumping out of Hannibal’s arms in his surprise. “Do you know what happened to them?”
Hannibal nods, holding him fast. “Your sand is in the possession of an exorcist. Your helm, as far as I know, is in Lucifer’s domain, and your ruby is with a doctor named Bedelia du Maurier. I believe she stole it from the Vergers while she was their attending physician.”
“I must get it back.”
“In time, my Lord. For now, you must regain your strength.”
Hannibal carries him to the study, laying him gently on the velvet couch as if Will were a dainty porcelain doll and not one of the immortal Endless. He removes his beige coat to cover Will’s naked form before politely excusing himself and leaving the room.
The cushion is soft against Will’s aching bones, and he melts against it, sighing contentedly as he wraps the coat tighter around himself. A gust of wind whistles past his ear, followed by a flap of wings.
“Hello, Winston,” he says, his voice soft with fondness. The raven lands on his chest with a caw, pecking Will’s hair, just like he used to. A smile eases onto Will’s face as he smooths out his feathers, and Winston presses his head against the space between Will’s brows.
“I see Winston has let himself in,” Hannibal says as he steps into the study once more, carrying a silver plate stacked high with food. It has everything a starved man could ever dream of — roast meats, sausages, bread rolls, puddings, and sweets — and yet Will regards it all with a scowl.
“Hannibal,” he chides, glowering at the plate as if it was a personal offense. “I am the very essence of dreams. I have no need for food.”
“Try it,” Hannibal says with a smile. “If it isn’t to your taste, I shall consume it myself.”
With an aggrieved sigh, Will picks up a drumstick and takes a bite. Then another. And another.
The flesh is cold but Will doesn’t mind, sucking the meat off the bones before devouring the roast beef next, licking and sucking on his fingers while Hannibal watches with both horror and amusement. Will doesn’t even realize how hungry he is until he has cleared two-thirds of the plate.
Will looks around the study as he eats, gazing at the array of weapons, taxidermies, and paintings of bloody hunts adorning its walls. It all reeks of sadistic pleasure, and a question gnaws at Will as he takes it all in. He asks, “Where’s Mason?”
“Dead, my Lord,” Hannibal says, flatly. “Do you wish to see him?”
Will stops chewing. Swallows. There is a numbness at first upon learning of his captor’s death, which twists and turns until it becomes pure, unbridled rage. Will sets his jaw, both relieved that Mason Verger is gone from this world and disappointed that he wasn’t the one who ended him himself.
“No, I don’t want to see that filth ever again,” he spits out, slamming the platter onto the nearest table and spilling the few remnants of food onto the floor. The loud grating sound of metal against wood elicits a gasp from the corner of the room, and both Hannibal and Will whirl around to find a closet door swaying slightly.
Hannibal is up in an instant, his footfalls steady as he makes his way to the open door. Will follows him with haste. He has a vague idea of who it could be and he is only grateful that he reaches the room in time to find two women huddled together, eyes wide with terror as Hannibal brandishes his dagger.
“Don’t hurt them,” Will says, placing a firm yet gentle hand on Hannibal’s shoulder. “Please. They were kind to me.”
Hannibal looks at him, uncertain, but he nods, sheathes his knife, and steps aside for Will to pass through. Will turns his gaze toward Margot Verger and Alana Bloom. He stoops down to their level, palms up as if he was calming a caged animal.
Margot speaks first. “You got out.”
“I did.”
“I’m glad,” she says. Her eyes remain steely despite the unshed tears threatening to run down her cheeks. “And I’m sorry. I should’ve tried again. I would’ve, but Mason—”
“I know,” Will interrupts, his voice soft. “I understand. I never faulted you for it. You must know that.”
She swallows and looks away, clutching Alana’s hand. “What happens now?”
“I will return home. And you…” Will pauses, noticing the day-old bruises around her wrists. “I can help you forget,” he offers, “If you so wish it.”
Margot smiles at that. “Thank you kindly, but I only wish to be free.”
“You are now,” he says, standing. “Take care, Ms. Verger. Ms. Bloom.”
Will takes his leave, beckoning Hannibal to follow him. He feels the tension bleed out of the two women when they leave, their fears replaced by hope. He witnesses their dreams in his mind palace — peaceful breakfasts and quiet evening walks. A new life together in a place they can call their own.
Will wishes them the best as he steps out of the front door, inhaling the crisp morning air. The sun rises by the horizon when his two companions join him — Winston landing on his shoulder, Hannibal standing by his side.
“Will you return to the Dreaming now, my Lord?” Hannibal asks.
He nods, not once taking his gaze away from the rising sun. “I have enough sand that can take us both. What comes after, I have yet to know.”
“Do you still wish to punish me?” Hannibal murmurs. It lacks the displeasure he bore decades before and the weary acceptance nags at Will. He looks at his creation, brows furrowed with curious concern. “Hannibal?”
“I deserve it, my Lord,” he continues. “The truth is I knew of your imprisonment, I just didn’t know where and I ignored it the best I could. I sought out glory and bloodshed, created nightmares of my own, and became a patron saint of murderers. And yet it is not enough. I couldn’t feel you at all. I’ve since realized that my existence is hollow without your presence.” Hannibal holds the hilt of his dagger, his knuckles white. “I was hoping that coming to your aid would earn me your forgiveness, but I am no fool. It cannot possibly be enough after what you have suffered, and for that, I apologize, my Lord.”
Will purses his lips, saying nothing for a moment. A part of him rages at the abandonment, yet he knows that if Hannibal truly wishes, he could’ve left him there to rot for centuries more. Besides, there is something inevitable about Hannibal’s choices. He isn’t like his other creations after all.
“When I asked you to come home that night,” Will starts, holding the cloak tighter around himself, “why did you refuse?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hannibal says quietly.
“It does to me.”
Hannibal hesitates, staring down at his shoe. “I sought to be your equal, my Lord. You craft dreams and hopes while I snuff them out.” He looks at Will, brows knitted with wariness, like a child waiting to be chastised or ridiculed. “I have no power in the Dreaming and I have no interest in usurping your throne. But I can bend reality how I wish here as a waking nightmare. I can be more useful to you here.”
Still, Will says nothing, staring at Hannibal with a guarded expression. It’s enough to discomfit the nightmare who fidgets, clenching and unclenching his fists. “My Lord?”
The corners of Will’s lips quirk up. “Do you know whose blood runs through your veins, Hannibal? Whose wrath, whose fear, whose violence?”
Confusion is written all over Hannibal’s handsome face. Will chuckles softly, placing a palm on his creation’s chest. “You’ve always held my heart. There is a reason why you were my favorite. You do not need to prove anything to me, my sweet nightmare.”
Hannibal gasps at the contact. Will feels his own heart beating beneath his ribs, knowing his creation can feel it too.
How they’re both conjoined.
Inseparable.
Will remembers it as if it was yesterday, how he cut his chest open and held onto his heart which hides his cruelties and dark designs, fashioning a nightmare out of it. He remembers how his creation came to life, gasping its first breath before beholding Will with such love and devotion.
“My Lord,” his nightmare had said, falling to his knees in worship. He kissed his palm and wrist when Will offered a hand, nuzzling against it like a great cat.
“Rise. You don’t need to kneel to me,” Will told him, guiding him to his feet. “We have no need for such formalities, my heart. My Hannibal.”
“Come home with me,” Will asks again. “Please.”
Hannibal doesn’t hesitate this time. He places a hand over Will’s, their heart beating steady beneath their palms.
“Yes, my Lord,” he says, spoken like a promise.
Will smiles.
One moment, they stand together, hand in hand as the sand engulfs them. Then with a cool spring breeze, they are gone.