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I can remember the giddy sensation of falling, of blood rushing in my ears.
***
I was enveloped by the other. We were so close that I felt we could almost merge into one skin. In the moment, I almost forgot who was holding and who was being held. Who was the murder, and who was the suicide.
We plunged together, heavy as stones, into the mouth of the black ocean.
Through it all, his heartbeat was steady. He didn't struggle against me. Buffeted by rushing air, I drank in his quietude and I made it my own. There was a stillness here, a moment stretched, free of fear or pain. I was enfolded in arms, and I was calm in the certainty of death.
Then, there was the pain. The impact was a flat and jarring slap, radiating up my spine. I held my grip for as long as I could, but the other was torn away. The separation was excruciating, an amputation. The cold water surrounded me, and it filled my lungs.
***
I feel myself gasping for air, but it sounds like a cry from another room, disconnected from my shadow-self, sinking into the violent sea.
***
When I hit the water I had forgotten my injuries, but the ocean hastened to remind me. The salt shocked every cut, every tear in my skin. I flailed, grasping for rescue, screaming silently under the water until my vision turned black.
***
Even through the intensity of remembered pain, I start to become aware that it is only an echo. I am more than just a series of disconnected memories. I am alive. My body is slower on the uptake. My chest still heaves to escape the drowning weight of water, and the breath is harsh in my throat.
As I wake, I can remember the harsh rhythm of hands pressing against my chest, strong hands. The creaking of my ribcage under this pressure, like rotten floorboards threatening to crack. Caught in the last moment of my dream, I turn my head. Half of me expects to vomit gouts of seawater, but my airway is clear. It is only a memory. The universe lunges around me like I'm still being rocked in the bosom of the ocean, but my body is dry. I am alive.
I am alive.
All I can smell is salt, and blood, and dust.
I open my eyes, and the room is dark. Even sightless, I can tell by the swaying and dipping that I'm on a boat. The ocean's lullaby must be hardwired into my brain. The bed is narrow beneath me, and the pillows under my head are hard. As I shift, the sheets feel scratchy, damp from soaked-in sweat. Pain is coming to life, radiating from my face to my shoulder to a million other hurts further down. I don't even want to contemplate how much damage has been done. So, I focus on the only thing I know. I am alive.
Even in this lurching twilight, I can tell that I'm not alone. The faintest sense of presence, the sound of soft breath, draws me to two eyes that shine through the gloom. Separated from self and time and context, I can only wonder if these eyes belong to the other from my dreams, my partner in the fall.
I want to speak, but I'm not sure what to say. My breath keeps hitching in my throat. As time continues to pass and we stay static, I start to wonder if they know that I'm awake. The longer that passes, the more I begin to question whether the other is there at all, if the eyes are even real.
***
Flat on the jagged rocks of the shore, my extremities were numb from the cold. I heaved up blood and brine, desperate to breathe. I reached out for his hand. He watched me, just beyond my reach, as I slipped back into unconsciousness. His eyes glimmered with concern, or pain, or something else.
***
I clear my throat, and speak. There is a name on my lips, and I use it. "Hannibal." I'm not sure if it's a statement or a question.
"I consider you akin to the skull on the floor of the Norman Chapel." The voice that cuts through the darkness is slow and meditative. "When I encounter you in the palace of my mind, you never cease to remind me of my mortality."
As reality coalesces gradually around me, I can remember the great and bloody hunt that led to the fall from the bluff.
***
I clung to his arm, reeling from blood loss and shaking with shock. His gaze back at me was loaded, a heavy dose of pride mixed with something approaching hunger. The death of Dolarhyde was secondary to our shared experience. This slaughter, this intimacy.
"It's beautiful." I said, and I meant it.
***
The memories make me recoil, a glorious victory, a damning betrayal. I trample my conscience beneath my feet, but it just won't die. The penalty for full recall, it seems, is to carry the weight of the terrible things you have done.
I wish the gloom would clear so I can see his face, gaze upon the shards of the teacup and know it's well and truly destroyed. In the darkness, the teacup exists, or doesn't, in limbo.
Schrodinger's teacup. What a thought.
It is nice, if bittersweet, to hear that I'm resident in Hannibal's thoughts. Since the first day Jack Crawford dragged me into the walking nightmare of the BAU, I've barely been resident in my own. My mind is an echo chamber full of the whispers of others, so there's hardly room for me.
"Do I walk those halls with regularity?" I ask, but it's hard to speak. My right cheek flares with pain, although it seems muted. Hannibal has given me some kind of drug to hold me through surgery. The wound has been stitched, giving an odd stretching feeling when I move my mouth.
His response, when it comes, is measured and without inflection. "You seem intent to murder me, almost at every turn. I wouldn't blame my mind for placing undue emphasis."
I don't know if I can be honest enough to admit to Hannibal that I never truly believed myself to be capable of killing him. The act of killing itself is familiar to me, to an uncomfortable degree, but I have more than once hesitated at the point of action where Hannibal is concerned. There is a quality to him that all the knives and guns in the world can't conquer. The only confrontation I crave, a clash of fists and teeth, always seems to be just outside of my reach.
I want to ask him if this is truly all he thinks of me, if I'm nothing more than a particularly enduring adversary, but the words die on my tongue. This thought feels too petty, too pathetic to be spoken. Also, I find myself resenting his flowery language. I'm in too much pain for pretty words. "Friends close, enemies closer?" I say, realising as I speak that I am baiting him. "Makes sense. Surely I wouldn't dwell in the hallways of your mind for any other reason."
Behind tattered curtains, the moon is emerging from behind clouds. My eyes have adjusted to the level of light in the room, and little by little my brain comes to the conclusion that I can see Hannibal's face. True to the tone of his speech so far, he is cold and impassive. He is also closer than I had thought him to be, perched on the opposite side of the bed. If I moved my leg, I could kick him in the backside. But even this close, there is a growing distance between us. Figuratively, he has never felt so far away. Even a well-aimed kick might just keep travelling through space forever and ever.
The guilt is rearing in my head, and I push it down. "I am, as always, the awkward house guest." I admit.
I find myself nervous to be so close. I'm fighting a growing urge to kick Hannibal in the ass. Also, my wounds are becoming uncomfortable as the painkillers wear off, and he may not be in the mood to provide any more in the near future. Especially if I kick him. I rearrange myself with effort, attempting to sit more upright against the dusty pillows. I notice that I am shirtless, not particularly surprising given the heavy bandage across my shoulder. Of course, yes, the stab wound. I wonder abstractly how much blood I've lost. I try not to be flustered about the fact that Hannibal took off my shirt, after all, he's done it before. As I shift in the bed, however, I realise that my pants are also gone. I find it harder to reconcile this fact, and can feel the blood rising in my cheeks. He left me my boxers, but that's a small victory.
Hannibal is still wearing all of his clothes, from what I can see. His sweater is tattered, salt-stiff against his skin, and crusted with blood where the bullet passed through his side.
***
There was a crimson explosion of glass fragments, raining down around Hannibal as he shielded me from the window. All I could smell was the sharp tang of the spilled vintage, and I couldn't tear my eyes away from him. His face curled into a grimace, but I wasn't sure whether it was due to the pain, or the waste of his wine.
***
Memories of this night will stay with me forever, a living sculpture, a tribute to my cowardice. I want to ask him about the bullet wound, feeling a frustrating mixture of guilt and curiosity. Conflicted as I am, I actually hope he's not in the process of bleeding to death. But I stay silent because I don't want him to know I'm concerned. To him, this subject may seem laughably irrelevant, in light of my recent actions.
He isn't saying anything. I wonder briefly if he's considering how to kill me, but dismiss the thought. I had been unconscious as he stitched and dressed my wounds. Also, yes, almost completely and (in my layman's perspective) unnecessarily naked. If he had felt actually, truly threatened by me, he could have extinguished me at any point. Asleep or awake, depending on the degree of revenge he felt he needed, and how much awareness on my part that would require.
Why won't he say something?
My mind is a sickening cocktail of emotions, spiced with a growing anger at his silence. I don't know why he would bring me back to this shadowed half-life, and greet me with no more than a cold statement of disappointment. I don't intend to apologise, if that is what he's waiting for.
"The palace of your mind," I start. "It's so immense, I'm amazed you even notice me there at all." I don't say this to compliment his breadth of knowledge or experience, but to imply that he's old. I don't know if this comes across very well. I let it go. "Do I lurk around the corners, Dr Lecter?"
Perhaps he's bored of this subject. Perhaps I don't care. Perhaps I do care, and I just want to make him think that I don't care. I can tell, though, by a minute shift in his composure, that he doesn't like the formal address. Surely he knows that it's a ploy, I've done this before.
"In which chambers do I wait to ambush you?" As I find myself getting angrier, I also find myself slipping into Hannibal's speech patterns. I guess there is a part of me that misses being on the same wavelength as him, even though I know I don't deserve his trust. I miss the calming, ordered patterns of his mind. "Peeking from behind the balustrade in your office? No, that's boring. Tell me, in the labyrinth of your memory palace, is there a kitchen for me to haunt, or a bedroom?"
It isn't funny, but I grin. It must look like a harsh grimace to him. I think I've pulled a stitch, and I can taste blood on my teeth. Such a charmer you are, Will Graham. I keep my eyes fixed on his, finding it curious in a passing moment how hard it used to be for me to keep eye contact with anyone, let alone Hannibal Lecter.
I want to push the edges of his tolerance, to get past this silence. It bothers me not to know what he's thinking, as for a brief and blissful time, I had a clear view inside his mind. Now, he has drawn the curtains, closed the windows and turned off the lights. "What an ominous presence I must be, Doctor."
Hannibal breaks eye contact with me, loser of the impromptu staring contest. His glance darts away, settles on a particularly interesting bit of fluff on the edge of the bed. There is a slight downturn to his lips. More disappointment. My mind revisits the option of kicking him in the ass, although there is no part of me that believes this would be received well.
"Am I an unwelcome visitor?" I spit. "Speak up, Dr Lecter. I can barely hear you, with all this talking around corners."
"Are you enjoying yourself, Will?" His words come quickly, softly. He is looking at me again, his eyes narrowed with an expression of regret that seems so familiar, although I can't quite put my finger on it.
***
"I would have liked to have shown you Florence, Will," He said, wavering before my vision. He fed me the contents of his spoon.
"The soup isn't very good." I said, because it wasn't. Just for a moment, he looked regretful. Almost sad.
***
"I find myself broken, and essentially human. Such a let down. I was promised so much more," I say. I can feel my body starting to tremble, shakes settling in. It feels like the start of a panic attack, anger mixed with dawning pain and the strain of my injuries. There is also fear, a palpable anxious fear that settles on my skin as a clammy sweat.
He inhales deeply. A moment of thought, or a pause to summon fortitude against the tantrum of a child.
I do not feel confident, but I try to manufacture confidence. I don't know if he can see past this facade, sense the sweat trickling down my neck. "I seem to be pissing you off." I remark, and the stitches pull again at my contrived grin. My beaming blood-red smile. "I feel validated. I did this to you, to us. This is -my- design."
***
"See? This is all I wanted for you, Will." He looked away from me, gazed upon the canvas we had painted together with the body of Francis Dolarhyde. His eyes were half-lidded with satisfaction, and his voice was affectionate. "For both of us." There was so much blood, covering him, covering me, so black in the moonlight.
***
His confession mocks me in memory, and even though I hate myself for it, I can hear his words pouring from my own lips, a cruel mirror of his hushed sincerity. "This is all I ever wanted..."
His weight shifts on the bed, and my words are cut off by the sudden grip of a strong hand on my throat. His face looms in my orbit. "You want me to speak plainly, Will?" His breath is on my face, and my own heartbeat thrums in my ears as panic sets in. I wish that Hannibal's heart would race in this way, as a counterpoint. This is music. I glare at him, unable to speak.
"I have shown a great deal of generosity toward you," Hannibal says. "But you continue to fling childish words at me to test my limits. You are being discourteous, Will. And I will not tolerate it."
I take the sudden slack in his grip as an invitation to speak. No, not quite. It's a clear request for an apology. From what I know of Hannibal's pathology, he doesn't need the pleas or the screams of his victims. I don't know with complete certainty what it is about the process that gets him off, but I don't think it's the small talk. If he wants me to apologise, it isn't as a victim. There must still be something between us, however eroded and starved. I can feel the heat from his closeness as he hovers over me, not against my body but only a fraction of an inch away. It sets my teeth on edge, this proximity. It itches. I bet he knows it, damn him. I don't want to give him what he's looking for.
My mouth is dry. "If you're going to kill me, I would much prefer if you would just get it over with."
He squeezes my carotid artery with his thumb, and part of me is actually impressed that Hannibal seems to be doing what he's told, for once.
***
In a brief window of consciousness, sprawled on blood-splashed rocks, I could feel the hesitant brush of his fingertips down the curve of my jaw. Touch for the sake of touch. Skin against skin. As my eyelids opened, he settled his thumb against my steadying pulse.
***
Bright spots begin to dance in front of my eyes. I know Hannibal can hurt me, I know that he wants to. And I know that I'll probably let him, through some twisted feeling of obligation, or guilt. The thought rises unbidden and I force it down, sickened. As much as he hurts me, I know he's not going to kill me without a lot more provocation. The thumb against my throat is just a subtle reminder that he is in control.
He slackens his grip just as my vision starts to fade to black, and the world suddenly snaps back into focus. "Is this what you want?"
My head hurts from the choke, and my pulse thumps in my temples. I lift my hand to grasp his wrist. He tenses against me, lest I snatch his hand from my throat. "What do you want from me?" I ask, and my voice sounds maybe an octave too high. "Do it, or don't. But stop trying to intimidate me."
"Why should I forgive you?" Hannibal says. There is a new roughness in his voice. "Make me understand."
I realise that we have never really come to blows, in all our years of back and forth. I would love to punch him right in the face. Bloody my knuckles against those cheekbones.
"I don't want you to forgive me." My stomach lurches, and I don't know if it's a wave beneath us, or if it's the thrill of plunging into the unknown. It must be the former, as we've been doing the latter for some time, both literally and figuratively.
I wrench at his hand, and his fingers fall away from my neck. "I tried to kill us, Hannibal." I say. There it is, a flicker of his eyes as I call him by name. A flinch. "I don't deserve forgiveness. I don't deserve understanding."
I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of Hannibal. I am, however, completely fucking terrified of the monstrous entity that is 'us'. I exhale, shudder. "I don't deserve you." There it is. Fuck.
I am afraid of myself. Afraid that I want to press my hands to the sides of Hannibal's head and gouge my thumbs into his eyeballs, to feel the blood run thickly down my wrists, onto my face. How else to stop him looking at me in this way?
I look away, sick to my stomach. I close my eyes.
***
Inside my head, a blur. A flashing, frantic dance of blade and axe, tooth and claw. The triumphant black wings of the Great Red Dragon spread and pooled on the concrete floor as the blood surged from his torn throat. Hannibal was masked in gore and beautiful, and I could see myself reflected, majestic.
***
"I can almost believe you." He pauses. "Repeatedly, you burn me. You manipulate me, and I let you." He turns my head back toward him, demanding my attention. His fingers are rough against the side of my face, and something snaps. When I sink my teeth into his hand, my bite pierces the skin. Hannibal recoils, and I lunge toward him, headbutting him squarely. My head is stuffed with so many conflicting emotions that I can barely breathe over their screaming. I react on instinct. I want to tear him apart. I want to dive beneath his skin.
Mistrust has colored his memory, I know. I surrendered everything inside myself to him, to the idea of us. And he thinks that I lied. Would he be wrong? Every word I say only confirms his accusation. Do I feel guilty because I went to him, or because I knew there was some stalwart remnant of goodness inside me that never could go to him?
Hannibal launches himself at me, pinning me to the bed. His hands grip my shoulders, pressing against the bandages and the stab wound. Fresh agony twists my body. Blood seeps anew.
I thrust my knee upward, aiming for his groin. As he twists to deflect, I tilt my hips up and sideways to mess with his balance. He is strong, oddly strong for a man who spent the last three years locked in a glass-walled room, but in his current state it throws him off guard. He tumbles onto his back, and I follow, flinging the thin sheet aside, gritting my teeth against the pain. I am fueled only by adrenaline and wrath. I am what he has made me. Surely, he can see that.
My knees pin his sides, adding a painful pressure to his bullet wound. I throw one good punch to his face, knuckles driving into his jaw, tossing his head. A small grunt escapes him. This sound, so human, makes me hesitate.
This isn't what I want.
The silence stretches, and as he realises I'm not going to hit him again, his body relaxes underneath me.
"I'm not lying to you," I say, simply. Breathing is difficult, talking even worse. I'm bleeding from several places, and there probably wasn't a whole lot of blood left in me to begin with. I'm battered and bruised, and I'm only wearing a pair of boxer shorts. "I wanted to run away with you, Hannibal. Kill with you. Become..." I struggle for words. "Whatever it was that I was becoming. But I was afraid."
He opens his eyes, watches me through narrowed lids.
"I can't shed my skin so easily, Hannibal. I still want to."
"Is it the Dragon that speaks for you, Will?" He asks suddenly, his voice steady. This question is incongruous coming from his bloodied lips, and for a moment I see us together in his office again. Sitting in elegant leather chairs. Sociably conversing. Navigating the convoluted folds of my brain.
"I got inside his head," I say. "He was my quarry. But I don't believe he's taken up long term residence inside me. I don't feel any compulsion to 'change' you."
His chest heaves beneath me with a sharp intake of breath.
"That doesn't number among my urges," I finish. I am treading very carefully in the territory of honesty, but I hear the phantom click of mines beneath each measured step. All the fight has left me and I gingerly disengage from the other man, sinking back onto the bed.
Hannibal pauses, watching me thoughtfully as I resettle beside him. He doesn't move to get up. A cut on his lip is oozing blood, and his tongue darts out briefly, testing the wound. I wonder if he's going to ask what urges I do feel, especially toward him. I don't know what my answer will be. But when he speaks, I don't need to find out. "We are both changed."
"We have a long way to go." I respond. His face is so close to mine. The bed is so narrow. But the closeness no longer makes me nervous. "Are you going to kill me, Hannibal?"
"No." Without hesitation. "Are you going to leave me?"
"Never." I say, and I feel the flush in my cheeks when I realise it's true. "And... I'm sorry."
***
"Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment in the very sight of you?" Asked Bedelia. Her expression was familiar, as if every word was a delectable morsel from Hannibal's kitchen. I had seen this satisfaction before at his table. "Yes."
Her words were veiled with menace but her eyes shone with tears. I felt a cold shudder in my limbs at the confirmation.
"But do you ache for him?"
***
He accepts my apology with a slight nod. "I wish I could understand you." He muses. "Every time I look at you..." He doesn't finish the thought, but I understand. Too many times I have lied to him, although to be honest, he had reciprocated on many an occasion. I wish my motivations were as transparent to him as the varied minds of humanity are to me. As his leg brushes against mine, I wish this touch would fuse our skin together.
"I'll follow you for as long as you want me around," I say. "As long as you know that you've ruined me."
"We've ruined each other." The corner of his lip quirks slightly.
Something twitches inside me. It's a warm, spreading feeling that fills me from my toes up. My limbs tingle. I think it might be relief, triumph at having broken through, at last. A completeness.
Without knowing why, before I have a chance to think, I dip my head toward him and crush our lips together.
The small startled sound I hear seems to come from my own throat.
Beneath me, his eyes are wide. Registering shock, I start to pull away. Damn it Will, what have you done? But then I feel his fingers tangle in my hair, pulling me closer. His teeth graze across my lower lip, and his mouth opens to mine.
I can taste his blood, my blood. He tilts his head slightly, and his tongue flicks against mine. I'm in freefall, too wrapped up in the moment to think or to hesitate. I reach out and grab a handful of his sweater, twisting, holding him against me. I want to touch his skin, run my hands over his chest, feel his heart beat against me. I never want to be apart again. I never want to come up for breath.
I experience the sensation of falling, enfolded in arms.
It feels like minutes, but it is probably only seconds. Hannibal's fingers trace my jaw as he tilts his head ever so slightly away from me, breaking the kiss. He sighs.
I can't help but wonder how long it will be before entropy takes over. He and I are suspended over the roiling atlantic. Soon, all of this will be lost to the sea. "Do you think we can ever let it go?" I ask, my voice quiet. "The mistrust will still be there behind us, the lies. Are you going to have a problem with this?"
***
"The mathematics of human behaviour," Said Hannibal, almost a lifetime ago. "All those ugly variables." We sat together in a shaft of morning light, dust dancing in the stuffy air of the hotel room. It was the first time that Hannibal had cooked for me, a breakfast scramble of eggs and sausage. The day I killed Garret Jacob Hobbs.
"Some bad math with this Shrike fellow," He continued. "Are you reconstructing his fantasies? What kind of problems does he have?"
I think I felt comfortable with him, even then. I was too forthcoming, too confiding. The meal really was delicious, particularly as I tended to consider food from a purely utilitarian perspective. In my memory, it remains delicious even if I stop to think about the provenance of the meat.
"He has a few." I admitted.
He regarded me with a smile on his face, and a tenderness. "Ever have any problems, Will?"
***
Hannibal is looking up at me with too much intensity, his gaze feels like it could burn holes in my skin. I struggle to maintain eye contact and fail, focusing instead on his swollen lips, the small trickle of blood.
"Will this be a problem, Hannibal?" I ask again.
He doesn't know what I'm thinking, but he leaps anyway. Reckless. I must have taught him something after all. "No." He says.
"Of course not. You and I are just alike." I reply, and my lip twitches in what could be construed as a smile. I can't help it, the memory is a pleasant one. A calm before the storm. "Problem free. Nothing about us to feel horrible about."
I can feel it before I see it. A low rumble, a vibration in his chest that conducts through the mattress beneath us. A crinkle forms in the corner of each eye, and he starts to laugh. Not a full belly laugh, more of an exaggerated chuckle, but it is surprised, unguarded and genuinely joyful.
Behind his eyes, the curtains are pulled back. The lights are on. And he laughs, without restraint.
It isn't long before I start laughing too.