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There’s no time to think as they fall: no time to think about what he did, why he did it, what he wanted to happen when he did. No, for the brief time that they’re suspended between land and sea, all Will can do is feel: feel the abrasive wind whistling through his wounds, the blood trickling steadily from his cheek, Hannibal’s arms contracting around him as they plunge towards black, fathomless depths.
Hannibal’s grip is tight and unyielding. Even in freefall, beholden as he is to the forces of gravity and nature, he’s somehow able to maneuver them into falling feet‑first at an angle. Will is on top, encased in a cocoon of warmth that shields him from the stinging, salty air. Instinctively, he presses closer and pushes his face into Hannibal’s chest.
How much time has passed? He’s not sure, though it can’t have been much. It doesn’t matter: the water is close now, too close, and Will is all too aware of the permanence of his actions and the fact that the next time he sees Hannibal may be in the afterlife, if at all.
He presses closer.
Hannibal hits the water first, though Will still feels the impact reverberate in his bones like a death knell. There’s no time to think as they fall, but he can’t help but notice how the scattered moonlight on the sea looks like stars.
Then Will sinks further into the soft embrace of the dark, and he knows no more.
Muddied sensations swirled around him when he woke, alone. He came back to himself slowly, spent minutes searching for the scattered parts of himself and trying to fit them together in hopes of remembering who he was, where he was, and why he felt like there was still a piece missing.
It took a couple of minutes to do this, during which he lay immobile on the sand and stared blankly at the clouds scudding across the sky, but eventually he remembered. My name is Will Graham, it’s God‑only‑knows o’clock, and I’m by the Atlantic Ocean. He was dimly aware that Hannibal’s safehouse was nearby, but no sooner did the thought cross his mind than he shot up, eyes snapping open and abruptly closed again at the pain coursing through his body. Still, he gritted his teeth and pushed through. Hannibal — he needed to find Hannibal.
His eyes were stinging but he didn’t want to risk worsening it by contaminating them with blood or salt water, so instead of rubbing them he stood on the beach and blinked rapidly. The scene blurred around him and he almost fell over, so he stumbled to a large rock and sank against it. His shoulder hurt. Both of them, actually, and looking down he saw why: one had been stabbed, the other dislocated. You should deal with that, drifted across his brain. He couldn’t do much for the stab wound in this state, but he was able to shuffle around onto his back and try to reduce his shoulder, desperately wishing he had access to anesthetic. He managed eventually, but his head swam with the effort, even with adrenaline distracting him from the pain.
If it was good for anything, the pain of popping his shoulder back into place seemed to have woken him from the daze he’d been in, at least enough to gather his wits and search for Hannibal. He couldn’t see him; he must have washed up further down the beach.
Grunting with the effort and resolutely ignoring the wound in his cheek which he knew needed urgent attention, he forced himself down the beach, scanning the shore and the sea alike for a sign of Hannibal. Nothing; all he could see was a dark pool of blood from where he himself had been lying. He swallowed back the wave of dread and nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, turning his face skywards as if beseeching the gods for advice. As if he and Hannibal deserved their help. He scoffed, his gaze landing on the house. It was still visible from here, though far away and hazy under cover of night. Still, it was his best shot at survival, so, praying all the while that there was a way up the cliffs and that the FBI hadn’t found the house already, he limped in its direction, using the warm light that flooded from the windows as both direction and encouragement.
Miraculously, he did find a way up. It was long and arduous and hampered by his numerous injuries he found himself counting his steps in an effort to distract himself but he made it. He almost crashed into the door, almost cried with relief when it opened easily and he didn’t need to search for a key or walk around to the bluff, and, once he was in, headed blindly for the kitchen. Warmth enveloped him immediately, tempting him to curl up and sleep, but he didn’t let himself. If he fell unconscious now, he may never wake up.
He dug through the cupboards until he found a small medical kit and leaned against the counters for support while he slumped on the floor. Deep breaths in, deep breaths out, as he catalogued his injuries: stab wounds in his shoulder and cheek; severe blood loss; probably a couple of broken ribs; and probably a concussion, judging by the way the lights were blurring. He was breathing normally, though, so at least his lungs were still intact.
The next hour felt like it lasted eons, as he sat by himself in silence and slowly patched himself up as best he could. He found a mirror somewhere and used it to sew up the hole in his cheek; the stitches were tight and uncomfortable and nowhere near as exact as Hannibal would have been able to make them, but they did the job. As he moved on to his shoulder, his ribs, and the sundry other relatively minor cuts and scrapes he’d obtained, the only sounds were those of his rough, wheezing pants and the dull roar of the sea — the roiling Atlantic, as Hannibal had put it — still crashing ceaselessly against the rocks. He didn’t hear anything to indicate Hannibal’s presence. He tried not to think about what that meant and reminded himself they couldn’t find each other if one of them was dead, so focused instead on the pain piercing his body. Probably‑too‑much Ibuprofen instead of medical‑grade painkillers, because he didn’t want to get himself killed via overdose after having survived flinging himself off a cliff.
That done, there wasn’t much else for him to do but wait, and sleep, so he headed into the bowels of the house. He felt like a ghost as he wandered the halls, drifting aimlessly along the corridors in search of a bed; eventually, he found one, and barely managed to get his shoes (well, shoe, because he’d lost one at some point) off before he reached it. He stripped back the comforter, uncaring of the blood, sweat, and dirt he was getting everywhere, and within seconds, sank for the second time into the dark.
The next day felt like a dream. He woke after eleven hours of sleep, ate a breakfast of crackers and a bruised apple, drank almost a quart of water, and immediately headed out to look for Hannibal because he no longer felt like he might keel over and die at any moment. Instead of thinking about the pain, he thought about how it was a good sign he was feeling it at all, since it meant he hadn’t sustained any serious nerve damage.
He spent hours combing the nearby beaches but didn’t find anything, the tide having washed away any physical evidence he might have come across.
He went back inside, heated a can of soup on the stove, and turned on the TV to distract himself.
The FBI hadn’t found Hannibal either, which was good. There was lots of buzz about the original plan, what went wrong, whether he was on Hannibal’s side (a question even he didn’t know the answer to), and, of course, where they were now. He wished he knew the answer to that one, too. He didn’t look at Dolarhyde’s body; as beautiful as it may be in the abstract, philosophical sense of the word, he didn't think he could stomach the sight of a mangled serial killer on top of everything else that had happened in the past 24 hours.
Dry facts aside, talk shows were mining them for all they were worth. There was plenty of discussion of the nature of his and Hannibal’s relationship, and after an audience poll returned a 50‑50 split over them being romantically involved, he turned off the TV and sat in silence.
The thing was, he didn’t think the hosts were entirely wrong. No, there had never been a sexual component to their relationship, but if pressed, he couldn’t definitively say there was never a romantic one, either. They’d always been . . . intense, and knowing what he knew now about Hannibal’s regard for him only made him feel more uncertain about where they stood.
And to be honest, the whole experience of killing with Hannibal and falling into his embrace before falling over the edge had been so undeniably intimate that he found it hard to picture a world in which all that happened and they simply returned to how they’d been before. In the moments between tipping them over the cliff and slamming into the sea, Will had felt closer to Hannibal than he ever had before, so close he’d struggled to tell where one ended and the other began. He wasn’t sure how that would manifest in their relationship, but he knew it was significant.
That train of thought inevitably led him to anxious wondering about where Hannibal was. Frustration burned in his chest: frustration at his injuries, keeping him from searching the whole day long; frustration at the sea for washing away any evidence of Hannibal’s presence; frustration at himself for not just instinctively knowing where Hannibal is. Because surely he must, right? He’d just been waxing poetic to himself about how he’d felt so close they were inseparable, so surely he should have just known where Hannibal was. They were connected, conjoined, so why didn’t he know ?
He gave himself a couple of minutes to wallow in a pit of existential despair before forcing himself to get moving. Fate may have given him a grace period to recover from the initial shock, but he didn’t want to push his luck and risk the FBI emerging in the night to knock down the door. He needed to leave as soon as possible, not least because if he was arrested then there’d be no chance of finding Hannibal anyway. He wished it were possible for him to wait for him for as long as it took, but he couldn’t afford to take that risk right now.
He heaved himself up, washing his bowl and spoon. He didn’t really know why — it wasn’t like Jack wouldn’t know he was here, and he was hardly going to be using the dishes any time soon — but he liked to think of it as being Hannibal’s influence. He could almost see the look he’d receive if he left dirty dishes out. Rude, he’d say.
After washing and cleaning up, he headed to the study, thinking he might be able to find something useful there. Maybe the address of a safehouse? He hadn’t asked earlier how many secret properties Hannibal had sequestered far away from the paws of the FBI, but he honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if it numbered in the dozens.
In the study, there were two large windows overlooking the ocean, a desk facing the door, and a few bookshelves to the right. He spent a second brushing his fingers over the spines before circling back to the desk and rummaging in its drawers. It felt odd to do so, and he was half‑expecting, half‑hoping for Hannibal to turn up and berate him for the invasion of privacy, but alas, no such luck.
He was pleasantly surprised to find an unmarked envelope in one of the drawers and tipped it over to find various documents inside, as well as a wad of cash that looked like it was valued in the thousands. Looking through the documents, they were everything he needed to change his name and start a new life, fake passport and all. He felt a twinge of wistful melancholy at the thought of Hannibal painstakingly preparing these documents for them both — and possibly Abigail as well, though he couldn’t see anything for her in here — while still laboring under the illusion that they were going to leave together. Where did he even get that photo? he wondered as he looked at his new passport, which named him ‘Mark Sanchez’. He paused when Hannibal’s fell open to read ‘Hans Sanchez’ — his husband, according to the papers. Was Hannibal in that deep even then? God, Will really needed to get better at people. Give him a murderer and he could tell their life story any day of the week; give him his own relationships, and he was a blind man fumbling in the dark.
He shook off the feeling and grabbed the documents. He hesitated with regard to Hannibal’s, torn between leaving them here in case he stopped by and taking them in case they ran into each other later, but in the end he decided to take them. It was better than risking the FBI finding them, and, should worst come to worst, he was certain Hannibal had some more fake IDs stashed away somewhere. If not, he certainly had the resources to make more.
While he was searching through the pile, an address caught his eye. It was a property in Cuba, probably another of Hannibal’s safehouses. He felt an unbalanced grin stretch across his face and grabbed the address. He stuffed their new identities haphazardly back into the envelope, only taking the time to make sure they weren’t torn, and quickly scanned the rest of the desk and drawers for any leads the FBI could have used.
Seeing none, he went to take a shower and brainstorm what to take with him when he left. The wounds in his shoulder and cheek were still tender and liable to bleed at the slightest irritation, so he avoided them and used a flannel and antiseptic wipes instead. Even with those minor setbacks, he felt infinitely better upon stepping out of the shower and beginning to pack his bags. He ended up taking two: a backpack and a satchel, containing documents, medical supplies, non‑perishables, water, and whatever clothes he could find that looked like they’d fit and weren’t a three‑piece suit. He put them by the door and did a final sweep of the house, lingering in the living room as his gaze did the same on Dolarhyde. In the light of day, some of the mystique surrounding him had dissipated, and he looked much more man than dragon. Looking at the crumpled heap of blood and bone on the bluff, Will almost felt sorry for him.
The moment broke, and he returned to the kitchen. He wiped down the counters, straightened the stools and chairs, and closed and locked the windows, before pausing and removing his ring. Holding it in his hand, he was struck by how it seemed to have changed overnight: whereas before it glowed warmly like sunlight, now it only glared coldly at him from against his skin. Carefully, he placed it in the middle of the island, conspicuous enough that it couldn’t be missed or dismissed as having fallen off accidentally.
He donned one of Hannibal’s coats, taking one last look at the house which had changed his life irrevocably, whether for better or worse. The walls echoed with words from long ago.
We could disappear now. Tonight. Feed your dogs, leave a note for Alana, and never see her or Jack again. Almost polite.
There were worse ways to go, he supposed. Maybe he should have written a note.
He picked up his bags, made sure he had all the documents and medicine, and limped out of the house. As he walked away he was struck with a strange sense of finality and inevitability; and when he heard the soft click of the door closing behind him, he could almost imagine his old life, and all the follies and foibles of Will Graham, behind it.
After that, life was a blur during which he was only vaguely aware of the fact that the entire country was on the lookout for both him and Hannibal. In this sense, Will was lucky: he wasn’t as famous as Hannibal, and the three years or so since he was last in the news meant that, hopefully, only true crime buffs and law enforcement would recognize him on sight. Of course, there were the articles on Dolarhyde still to come, but he was hoping for now that Hannibal’s notoriety cast a wide enough shadow for Will to hide in the uncertainty and panic surrounding their disappearances.
He worked his way along the coast until he ended up in a boatyard in one of the Carolinas. He didn’t know and didn’t particularly care which one — all he cared about was the fact that he’d just found a ship which looked like it’d be able to withstand a journey to Cuba.
It was almost midnight, and he was creeping through the boatyard, bags in hand. It felt strange to be on the other side of the veil for once, to be the monster under the bed instead of the child scared of it. It was somewhat comforting, the knowledge that in all likelihood he was the most dangerous man in a five‑mile radius. He knew for a certainty that, were anyone to try to stop him, he wouldn’t hesitate to deal with them swiftly and surely.
He was armed with a knife, but thankfully didn’t have to use it, and managed to slip onto the boat and steer it out of the harbor without any alarms being raised. It was dark, moonlight obscured by the gray clouds swirling through the sky. Occasional pockets of starlight appeared and shone down on him, and he felt a bit better at the sight.
Once the boat was headed in the right direction, he dumped his bags in the bedroom and rifled through the fishing equipment. It wasn’t ideal, but he should be able to catch something out here, and the combination of fish and food that he’d brought with him should be enough to last him to Cuba. The biggest issue was the looming prospect of dehydration (water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink, he thought dryly), but he’d had the forethought to take a large crate of bottled water before leaving. As long as he wasn’t stupid, he’d be able to hold out for a few weeks before having to dock.
The first week passed quickly. Will’s days were mostly consumed by attending to his injuries (which he still felt acutely, every second of every day), sailing, and watching the horizon for any other mariners, and it provided a welcome reprieve from everything he knew he needed to think about. For now, he’d rather sequester himself in his little bubble, away from the chaos he knew was transpiring on land.
Time flowed more like honey than water in the second week, creating a drawn‑out effect that made him feel like everything else was infinitely far away, receding further into the distance with each tick of the clock. Some stretches of time were marked by a loss of identity, where he simply existed in the middle of the ocean, nothing and no one for miles — including himself, he felt; others were marked by the impression that there had never been anything except this boat and there never would be, that he was destined to remain in limbo for all eternity. There were worse ways to exist, though he did wish Hannibal were with him.
The seemingly‑endless time he had on his hands also lent itself to thinking more about the future, as faraway and abstract as it seemed. At his current pace, he’d be in Cuba by the end of next week, and he needed to have a plan in place — contingencies, too.
Still, he found his mind drifting away from practical matters towards more emotional ones. He’d be wondering how long he could get by on the cash he had, which, although extensive, was far from limitless (he thought he’d be able to get by with US dollars, but he made a mental note to find a bank or currency exchange if not), and slowly, so slowly he wouldn’t even notice at first, his mind would turn and tick over until he found himself musing on when Hannibal had stored the money and, eventually, what might have been had he gone with him that night in Baltimore. The what‑ifs and if‑onlys crowded his mind and he deliberately stopped himself from thinking about them because there was no point — Will Graham was dead, and his past along with him. All he had to do now was live in the moment and try to anticipate the future.
Of course, that inevitably left him wondering where Hannibal was and whether he was all right. He ran over every situation he thought could plausibly have occurred in their separation: perhaps Chiyoh had found him, or perhaps he’d washed up further down the shore and was hunkering down in another of his safehouses. Perhaps he was also on his way to Cuba, he thought once, with no lack of idealism. It felt nice, the idea that even miles apart as they were, they were kindred spirits, in tune with each other no matter the distance. He allowed himself to garner some comfort from the idea of Hannibal making his way down on foot, parallel to Will in his boat, though he knew it was unrealistic.
There was another possibility. He knew this; he couldn’t escape the knowledge, for all he wanted to. It haunted his dreams, a ghost that loomed menacingly behind every conjecture he made about Hannibal’s fate, and he knew all too well what it was. He didn’t allow himself to consider it — he didn’t even allow himself to give voice to it, in his mind or otherwise — because the thought was so terrible and incomprehensible that he didn’t think he could bear the consequences, real or imagined. The thought of Hannibal just — No, it wasn’t possible. Hannibal had forced his way into Will’s life for good, regardless of whether or not he was invited, and he’d become an integral part of his world in the same way as the sea and the sun and the sky. The event of Hannibal . . . Hannibal being changed, would be similar to the demolition of a load‑bearing wall: with it, so, too, would Will’s world and fragile sense of peace come tumbling down and crumble into dust.
So for the second and third weeks he occupied himself with very deliberately not thinking about that, and very nearly fooled himself into believing that Hannibal would be waiting for him in Cuba. He hoped, of course, though he had no confirmation either way and all logic and common sense was firmly against him. The hours he didn’t spend navigating he spent fishing or cooking or attending to his injuries; the evenings he spent watching the sunset and, later, the stars. For the second time, he wondered if Hannibal’s stars were the same.
He docked in Cuba without incident. He gathered his meager belongings on deck and retreated underneath to wipe everything down, taking much more time than he needed to.
He knew just enough Spanish to be able to get vague directions to where he needed to go, and a couple of hours later he found himself walking a lonely road towards the distant silhouette of a house. The windows were all dark and, doing a quick circuit of the outside, all locked. The paranoid part of his mind forced him to check the perimeter before trying to get in, though for what he didn’t know — maybe he was expecting FBI agents to be waiting to drop out of the trees like the monsters in a video game.
There was nothing, of course; he was alone. He picked the lock and fumbled for the light switch (absently, he wondered whether the bills were paid automatically and whether that was even something he needed to worry about), eventually finding and flipping it to reveal a house coated in dust from clear disuse. It was fully furnished — there were even some non‑perishables in the cupboard, though only enough to last a couple of days at a stretch — but if anything that only compounded the lonely atmosphere. It felt like he’d walked straight into the ghost of the life Hannibal had prepared for them all those years ago. For the first time in years, Will was completely on his own, and he had nothing and no one to fall back on apart from the hope of Hannibal appearing to interrupt his solitude.
He unpacked in minutes, putting the few food items he had left away and cleaning a dusty glass he found in the cupboard before taking a long drink of water. In the midst of this, he inexplicably stumbled upon a bottle of whiskey in the back of a cabinet, clearly a few years old and a lot more expensive than anything Will would ever buy for himself. Still, he thought he deserved this, so once he’d moved the rest of his stuff into the bedroom and shaken the dust off the sheets, he leaned up against the headboard and poured himself a glass.
He heard a voice in his head (which sounded too much like Hannibal for comfort) telling him not to drink with the cocktail of painkillers and medication in his system, but he didn’t care enough to listen. This had been one of the most intense months of his life (and the fact that he couldn’t even say falling off a cliff and going on the run was definitely at the top of the list really said a lot about his life choices), and he wanted — no, needed — to relax. If that meant he ended up drinking an entire bottle of whiskey, so be it.
Drowsiness overtook him before he even finished four fingers, though, so he decided to call it a day and shuffle into bed in just his boxers. He curled up under the covers and tried not to let the sudden feeling of loneliness overtake him, and tried to ignore the feeling of his future stretching out before him like a dark, uncertain sea.
Over the next week, he didn’t do much. He’d wake up, always early, always rested because there was nothing else to do, spend an hour coaxing himself out of bed, sometimes eat, and try to find something to wile away the endless hours till it was late enough to justify lunch. He went shopping a few days after arriving, and bought enough food to last him over a month. He also bought a cheap laptop for the sake of an internet connection, and tried his best not to spend hours obsessively scouring the news.
He made a rule for himself on the third day of refreshing TattleCrime one too many times in an hour: once a day per site, and for half an hour total. He obeyed this like he would a religious edict, and when he didn’t he felt bad enough about the definitive lack of news that he often didn’t even open the laptop the next day.
It was a balance, this life of his: a balance between no news and too much; a balance between being amicable enough not to stand out but not so friendly anyone actually wanted to be his friend; a balance between getting too much and too little sleep because one made him hallucinate and the other plagued him with nightmares, and he didn’t know which was worse.
All the while he thought of Hannibal, if not always in explicit terms. He imagined his face at the state of Will’s diet, he laughed at jokes he might have made, and, once, he caught himself making a mental note of someone’s name when they were rude to him. He stopped that train of thought quickly, unable to stomach it — the thought of killing, or of killing without Hannibal, he wasn’t sure.
When not thinking about Hannibal, he was acting like he was here or on the way, like on the morning he sat down to learn French so he could look for him or live with him in Europe, whichever came first. He was lucky in having picked up some words and phrases and a general feel for the language from Louisiana, but it was still a steep learning curve. He didn’t mind, though; he needed to fill the days with something.
All in all, there were good days and bad days. On good days, he felt a constant, dull ache (Pour one out for Bedelia, he thought mournfully one night). On bad days, he felt nothing at all and merely went through the motions, mindlessly acting out his farce of a life.
Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine Hannibal in the room with him. He’d always hover just beyond the borders of his vision, just out of reach and too far away to touch, but he was there. His presence was unmistakable, and brought with it a bitter comfort. Will knew, were he to reach out, he’d feel only smoke and air, so he didn’t try. Don’t break the illusion, as thin as it may be. So he pretended Hannibal was still around, that Will’s own breaths were actually his, and that when Will sat outside and looked at the stars at night, Hannibal was regaling him with tales of the constellations’ myths. Knowing him, he’d probably try to compare them to a pair of legendary lovers or something, perhaps Pyramus and Thisbe, and upon thinking this Will dissolved into hysterical snickers — and then immediately felt small and sad and stupid for sitting there, drinking and laughing alone, and went to bed soon after. Some days, he was paradoxically glad he had no company, because at least no one was there to ask him to explain why he was laughing. This was something to be treasured, the last morsel of his one‑time lover he might ever get, and to tell someone would be to take even that from himself.
So far, he’d been good at not thinking of Hannibal in absolute terms and treading the dark waters of ambiguity and uncertainty. He still refused to consider Hannibal dead for more than a second, because the idea of resigning himself to life without him was white‑hot and burned him to the core, so he convinced himself he was merely living in the interim between acts, the unseen moments between scenes of a film. Some days, he almost believed it.
Six months went by in this fashion, and he eventually accepted that Hannibal wasn’t coming to Cuba, so he planned his next move. His French had gotten better, though he hadn’t had much opportunity to practice speaking, and he decided to go to Europe. It would have been his next guess as to Hannibal’s location, anyway, so he booked the next flight to Portugal and took the first train he could. He’d built up a solid bank of cash from various menial labor jobs, so he had enough for a cheap hotel once he reached France.
He lasted one whole week of restlessness and ennui before, on a whim, he packed his bags and hopped on a train to Lithuania. He left with a vague hope of finding some clue or hint as to Hannibal’s whereabouts there — maybe he’d run into Chiyoh and she could point him in the right direction, or maybe Hannibal himself would be there. He stamped down on that last thought immediately, preferring not to get his hopes up.
When he arrived, the place was just as empty and devoid of life as he remembered. Wind whistled in the interstices of the castle walls and brought with it the rancid, acrimonious scent of death and decay, stretching from a bloody childhood in the snow to Will’s bloody footprints in the present day. It bit him as he ascended the steps outside, nipping at his ankles and neck and making him wish he had Hannibal here for warmth.
He spent hours wandering the halls, looking for the remnants of a dark past he’d only ever caught a glimpse of. He wondered how many living people knew about Hannibal’s past, whether anyone knew other than Will and Chiyoh. Even in the place where it happened, it all seemed so far away, like a fairy tale.
He stumbled across what he realized with mute shock must have been Hannibal’s old bedroom. It had clearly been ransacked at some point, but other than that it looked mostly undisturbed. He debated the ethics of going through it before deciding he might as well: he doubted anything he found would be enough to turn him away from Hannibal at this point, and God knows he’d probably never get a straight answer out of the man. Besides, most of it was in Lithuanian, which he couldn’t read. Still, he looked through the bookshelf and flipped through old children’s books filled with dusty, yellowing illustrations — some were intended for language‑learning, some for entertainment, and he briefly entertained himself by working out which was which.
He got bored eventually and replaced the books where he found them. There wasn’t much else to be seen in there, so he left and continued to wander the halls. He was hesitant about lingering too long: he felt like if he did, he was liable to number one among the ghosts.
He found a few other rooms, one the master and one which he thought must have been Mischa’s. He remembered seeing her grave the last time he was here, and wondered again what exactly happened to her. He knew she died at some point, and he knew it had profoundly affected Hannibal, but that was it. Maybe Hannibal would tell him one day, far in the future.
Eventually, he wound his way down, down, down to the basement, where he came face‑to‑face with the monument he’d constructed the last time he was here. Visually, it was . . . well, it wasn’t awful, though the smell certainly was. He didn’t loiter, both because of the sewer‑smell and the mingled sadness and regret he felt at the thought that Hannibal would never get to see this particular creation of his.
Will’s first piece of art, and here it was, rotting in a basement in the frozen wastes of Lithuania. Typical.
He left the country soon after that, with the distinct sense that he wouldn’t ever be coming back.
Once he returned, he got to work building as much of a life as he could. He realized he was beginning to go into denial, which meant he was starting to grieve Hannibal, which was something he found hard to process — so he didn’t. He let the thought fade into the dark recesses of his mind and ignored its existence entirely. He returned to manual labor as his source of income, which became an excellent outlet for the anger he inevitably felt at Jack, at Hannibal, at Fate itself for destroying his life and leaving him to deal with the aftermath alone.
The day he realized it had been a year since the Fall, he drank enough to black out and woke up to a pair of eyes gleaming at him in the darkness.
At first, he thought it was Hannibal, and the yelp he let out was one of excitement and fear, but he soon saw it was only a cat. He frowned; upon checking the house, he found he left the back door open. When the cat turned out to be neither collared nor microchipped, and seemed unwilling to leave the house in any case, he elected to keep it. He hadn’t had anything close to a real relationship, romantic or otherwise, in almost a year, and he could use the company. (It also reminded him of Hannibal, something he only admitted to himself between the lines of his thoughts.) Dimly, he wondered whether he’d entered the bargaining stage and started seeking a substitute, but he pushed that thought away, too, and told himself he was just lonely.
It was a combination of the cat and realizing his loneliness which prompted him to find a job at an animal shelter, where he soon acquired a dog whom he named ‘Beverly’. He never officially named the cat, but he found himself calling it ‘Hannibal’ because he was eerily reminded of the man and he had nothing else by which to remember him.
Working at the shelter also reminded him that he did actually like human contact, even if a true connection had gone out the window the moment he and Hannibal had been separated. Over the next four months, he had a select few one‑night stands in an attempt to stave off the loneliness, but it never worked. They were just warm bodies to fill the empty, cold bed he hated almost as much as himself. They were also almost all men, something he was sure Hannibal would have loved to psychoanalyze but which Will definitely wouldn’t. Whenever he had these (admittedly rare) bouts of contact, the study was always off limits. That was the most important room, where he kept any and all news and theories about Hannibal he could find. There wasn’t much, but he had little else to do and it was close enough to his old job that it became a familiar comfort. He checked any sightings within three days of home immediately; any further afield, and he would spend two to three days telling himself he wouldn’t do it before inevitably giving in and going anyway. He always felt pathetic and desperate during these trips, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like an addiction, but one he didn’t want to shake.
After a few months of this, he moved cross‑country, reinvented himself as Damien Gregory, and enrolled in vet school. It was good: the work was taxing and the workload intense, so it kept his mind and hands occupied and prevented him from spending half his time searching for ghosts in lonely places.
One day, someone recognized him. She didn’t say anything aloud — she wasn’t that stupid — but her fate was sealed the moment Will saw the minuscule widening of her eyes. He toyed briefly with the idea of letting her live and report him, but he decided against it. This was as close to a proper life as he was likely to get, and he didn’t want to throw it away on the astronomically small chance Hannibal saw her murder and found him. If he was alive, he clearly didn’t want to be found: Will had kept up his habit of half an hour every day, and there had been no kills. If he was still alive and kicking (or, more aptly, killing), he was being exceedingly careful, and Will liked to think Hannibal would at least care enough to tell him in person if he didn’t want to see him. It would be cruel to do after everything that’s happened, but he could learn to suffer separation if it only meant Hannibal was alive somewhere out there. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t done exactly the same to him; Hannibal would be perfectly within his rights to deny him, considering that Will had thrown him off a cliff the last time they saw each other.
So he followed the girl (his brain supplied Amelia, though it was easier to think of her in objectifying terms) home that night, and caught up to her. She knew it was him; he could tell by the way she went limp after she tried to scream, giving up almost immediately. She was smart — he’d give her that. He killed her with his hands as he was sure Hannibal would have wanted, using the knife he’d carried since Cuba, dumped her body in a river twenty miles away, and hoped she wasn’t smart enough to tell any of her friends about him. When he got home, he shaved the thick beard he’d grown and decided to grow out his hair, in hopes of avoiding any future sightings.
She hadn’t been that smart, so life returned to normal. Over the next four years, he had mindless sex twice, turned down four dates, and adopted two more dogs. He still didn’t have anyone he’d call a friend, but he’d always been good at filling the void with animals. He made notes of the names of the people who asked him out, fondly imagining Hannibal’s jealousy. Would he be jealous? He knew Hannibal was in love with him before, but even if he was alive he might not forgive him this time around. No, more likely he’d make an attempt on Will’s life for trying to kill him (again). Still, it was nice to indulge occasionally.
He had a lot of lists now. He wasn’t entirely sure what he intended to do with them, since after Amelia he’d decided killing just wasn’t the same without Hannibal, but he kept them nonetheless, even sorted by infraction. There were two overarching categories: those he included half‑jokingly and solely because Hannibal would have (such as the barista who’d spilled coffee on him two weeks ago), and the ones he could genuinely see himself following up on (such as the man he’d seen kicking a dog around the yard like a soccer ball three months ago: he’d come close that day, but stole the dog instead, garnering him dog number three and pet number four).
By the time the fifth anniversary rolled around, he was well into the ‘depressed’ stage, and hated himself more every day for inching towards acceptance. The day of, he claimed to be sick and ended up drinking for three days straight, only stopping because the dogs needed walking and the cat’s litter changing. He burned the newspaper clippings he’d collected over the years and wished he had something more tangible to remember Hannibal by. He kept anything with a photo, but all else turned to ash. At this point, believing him dead was the easiest option. It’d been six years; if he was alive, he didn’t want to see Will.
So he graduated from vet school, faked a smile for the photos, and imagined Hannibal being proud of him. Will was genuinely proud of himself, for once; doing it alone hadn’t been easy, and doing it while grieving and on the run had been damn near impossible.
Spending this long in one place seemed like pushing it, so he packed up and crossed the border to Italy. He took a job in a small clinic, way out in the countryside and on the opposite side of the country to Florence (too many bad memories), and resigned himself to a life of mundanity and fleeting, inadequate pleasures. He steadily added to his collection of strays, taking in a dog, a cat, and three horses: one horse he named ‘Hannibal’ and another ‘Ripper’, continuing his streak of being obsessed with someone who died seven years ago.
Life went on,
and on
and on.
He tried to make friends, or at least find people to be friendly with. He couldn’t bring himself to be in a relationship, but he told himself it was fine, that plenty of people were happy without romance, conveniently ignoring the fact he wasn’t one of said people. He devoted himself to his work instead, and even enjoyed it. He cut down on his alcohol intake; occasionally, he’d overindulge and become maudlin and depressed, but if anyone asked, he told them he’d recently lost a family member, and it otherwise didn’t happen enough to be worried. He accepted his life, even if he was still nostalgic for what could have been. But he didn’t concern himself with what‑ifs anymore, and concerned himself instead with petty problems like Mrs. Mulberry’s constant (irrational) concern for her dog.
One day, someone came in after their dog had been hit by a car. When Jennie asked him why he smiled at its name, he said it reminded him of someone he used to know, and it was close to the truth.
Any remnant of a smile disappeared completely when he walked into the waiting room to see a face he’d been dreaming of for eight years. At first, he wondered if he was dreaming now, or if the hallucinations had abruptly returned. But as the seconds ticked by and it became clear that not only could Jennie see him, but that he looked just as shocked as Will, he felt himself come around and that final missing piece slot into place at last.
Later, there’s all the time in the world to think. Will revels in the fact, revels in the memory of what he’s done and why, and how he doesn’t regret a single second. In this moment, suspended in time, all he feels is an overarching sense of peace and contentment. He stretches languorously and shifts closer to Hannibal in the bed, basking in the feeling of strong, familiar arms wrapped around him.
Will is on top again, which he’s grateful for (again), because otherwise he thinks he’d suffocate under Hannibal’s weight. He still presses closer, burrowing deeper into the warmth between the sheets.
He’s not sure how long it’s been now, not that it really matters. He’s been slipping in and out of a doze for a while, and he still gets a small thrill each time he opens his eyes and realizes that Hannibal remains beside and beneath him. They’re together again, at last, and it would take an act of God to pull him away now. Suffering separation is no longer an option, although the vice‑like grip Hannibal has Will in would suggest otherwise.
He presses closer.
It’s nearing morning now, the tip of the sun barely cresting the hilltops and casting golden light over the landscape, suffusing the sheets with warmth.
He quietly, contentedly, watches the sun rise, mind calm for the first time in years, and when Hannibal eventually awakens and almost immediately pulls him back down into soft, white sheets, he goes all too willingly.