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The night Will died, nothing unusual happened.
They had their evening meal, cooked by the girl down the lane. Hannibal couldn't see well enough any longer to do it by himself, so he guided the girl. Her name was Maddie. Will told him she had dark brown hair and wind-chaffed skin with a smattering of freckles. He said it with such warmth and fondness, Hannibal knew he had to keep the girl. Neither of them were sound enough to keep her as they would have kept Abigail, but they did let her cook for them, and clean, and entertained her late at night with stories about their travels -- carefully edited to omit the murders, of course. She laughed, and the sound filled their little cottage.
It was good to have her. She made Will spritely again, spry and caustic as when they were younger.
That evening, after Maddie had left, her flat little heels clip-clipping on the cobblestones of the lane, Hannibal turned to Will, feeling mischievous. He knew that after Maddie's visit, Will would be up for a good fight.
They couldn't fight as they once could -- knocking each other with minds and fists, snarling and biting and pushing and pulling. How many nights had they found themselves, throbbing with anger and bruises, Will riding Hannibal's cock with fury, slamming their bodies together until they both saw red and orange? But those days were behind them now. So they fought with their minds -- fragile and decaying -- and their words. Slowly, slowly, as the black breeze blew their curtains open. Hannibal smelled the cut-grass sweetness of summer in the air, and the lingering perfume of chocolate from the shop down the other end of the lane.
Hannibal threw the opening salvo.
"When was our beginning?"
Will laughed and the sound made Hannibal's heart stutter, just as it always had.
"When we fell off that cliff."
"You pulled us off, as I recall."
"Your memory is shit, then. We slipped and fell."
"You would like to tell yourself that. Tell us both that."
"Truth is always in the eye of the beholder, Dr. Lecter."
"Truth changes, as well, depending on the beholder's moods and situations, Will."
"What is your truth, then? When did we begin?"
Hannibal paused, so they could savor the anticipation, the words a calming and violent delight even after all those years.
"The day we met."
Will laughed again, that same wry laugh from the morning of their first meal.
You always are the same to me, Hannibal thought. For though Will's body had changed with time -- the skin and stomach sagging and paling, the veins of his legs and hands standing out more, his hair turning gray and then white, his face puckered with lines and wrinkles, his scars whitened past recognition, his voice becoming more gravelly, his hands boney and arthritic -- he was still Will. The man beneath and below all that flesh remained, intangible and beautiful and alive.
I will love you forever. I will love you in this world and in every world we are born and meet.
Hannibal thought that as they went to bed. They pulled the curtains over their windows before shutting them. They banked the fire, and turned off all the lights. They crept carefully to their bed, with the cozy mattress and soft down comforter. Will brushed his teeth, and came to bed. He kissed Hannibal, and then nuzzled against him, just as he had for thirty-four years.
"I love you, Will," Hannibal said into the dark, into the night, because he'd heard Will turn off the bedside lamp.
"I love you too, Dr. Lecter." And then, with a small tremor in his voice Hannibal wasn't sure he heard -- the tinnitus in his ears had only gotten worse and worse in the last few years -- Will said:
"I love you, Hannibal."
In the morning Will's body was cool -- too cool. And Hannibal couldn't wake him. He sat in their living room, waiting for Maddie. She called the ambulance, but they told him what Hannibal already suspected. An aneurysm, which resulted in hemorrhage, and then death. Will passed in his sleep without duress or pain, and nestled against Hannibal.
Maddie wouldn't leave Hannibal for the first week, until he insisted she go away. She seemed taken aback by his brusqueness.
"I know my way around the house," he said, more gently.
He didn't feel sad. At least, not terribly so. He didn't even feel all that lonely. At night he missed Will the most, and he did cry. He hesitated to clean their sheets, because he liked smelling Will while he still could. But that smell, of course, faded, and the sheets needed to be cleaned. So, with Maddie's help, he peeled back the fitted sheet, and then the thin sheets on top. They threw them in washing machine, and hung them out to dry. When Will and Hannibal had first settled in Switzerland, Will always preferred the smell and texture of line-dried sheets.
"There's something so crisp about the air here," he’d murmured.
As Maddie clipped one of the sheets, she said: "It's just the saddest thing in the world. Mr. Graham was just such a good man."
"He was," Hannibal agreed. "But few things are forever. I have faith. The cup shall come together again."
He sensed that she didn't understand, and attributed his babblings to those of an old man. But he knew he was right; he'd always been right about Will: that he could not contain nor predict him, and that Will could always gather himself up, and return, renewed.
Perhaps this time, it would be for longer than just life.
"You were so happy together, that night," Maddie said, and the unspoken words were: isn't that just horrible? It seemed like such a happy night, a normal night.
And it had been.
"It was, perhaps, the happiest night of my life," Hannibal said, realizing the words were true.
Maddie was probably confused, and there was no way to tell someone who was so young, who hadn't yet suffered and lost, nor loved and conquered, what he meant.
But what he meant was: it was the greatest honor of my life, to sleep beside Will Graham when he died. He'd borne witness to his death, albeit in a quiet, unknowable way.
Yet, that was life.
Hannibal began to think of the night of Will's death as their actual beginning, and he waited, patiently, for the day that they would find each other again, across all time and space.
He had patience like god; he could wait forever.