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“How do you know Hannibal?”
Will was aware Chiyoh could blow his head off before he could even react. The tension was almost comfortingly familiar.
Now, stood on the dank steps of the Lecter Dvaras in the night, he considered her question with care.
“One could argue, intimately,” he said.
The lantern lit her face but illuminated nothing. Her gun was still pointed straight at him and he tried not to look past her at the fireflies, kept at bay by the sharp light.
“Koibito? It’s a Japanese word for ‘lover.’”
He knew this already.
Hannibal’s office was warm with the fire lit. Will wandered to the table and looked through the sketches on it, admiring their beauty until he found one of himself sitting up in bed with a sheet around his middle. In the sketch his curls fell wildly around his face and his expression was gentle and amused. He wondered if this was Hannibal’s memory of a specific moment or just the way he most liked to think of him. The details were exact; the marks on his skin, the lines of his neck were all rendered precisely, as if from a photograph, but he knew no such image existed. He wondered how closely Hannibal had looked at him to be able to remember so specifically.
Under the image was some writing in Japanese.
“What does this say?”
“Koibito,” Hannibal spoke from right behind him; it seemed he had crossed the room on quiet feet so as to observe Will’s reaction closely without being noticed. Now he placed a hand on Will’s shoulder and spoke quietly into his ear.
“It means lover. It also…”
Will turned and kissed him, his hands wrapped around Hannibal’s jaw and Hannibal seemed perfectly happy to be interrupted, and to let Will take the lead. He accepted what he was given and waited until Will broke the kiss to take a breath before he pressed kisses into the crook of his neck and slowly progressed up to the spot over his jugular. If he bit down hard enough, he could kill Will right now. Will shivered, and turned his head a little to surrender more access. When Hannibal drew away, the firelight gave his eyes a warm whisky glow and his face was soft with affection. At times like this, Will wanted to give him everything. He knew he had to resist. He didn’t want to.
He had never questioned why Hannibal had written in Japanese. He knew a little about his family background and had assumed it was a matter of discretion, or simply an artistic choice; Hannibal had always loved to define his creations. Every meal had layers of meaning - what it was, who it was, how he presented it - and his caramel eyes were at their brightest when he told stories over the dining table. Even his murders were high art; no longer copies of the Masters, but Hannibal’s own style, whimsy laced with brutality to keep it sharp like a carefully balanced sauce. He elevated his every action with description so why should love be any different? He had simply defined it with a word of his choice, maybe because he thought the English one had lost its value, worn thin by everyday use.
Will had forgotten about it until now.
“Yes, I was his koibito,” he acknowledged, and reached slowly for the hem of his shirt to show her how that turned out.
“It also means a lifelong partner,” she said, and he froze where he stood.
He had dismissed the word as inconsequential, a whim. But even Hannibal’s whims had depth if you cared enough to look.
He had not seen.
Hannibal, holding him tenderly as he bucked and bled, whimpering in his embrace.
He had thought so much about the ways Hannibal had betrayed him that he had forgotten the ways he had comforted him. A broth full of the best quality ingredients, a carefully placed blanket, tenderness in bed; he had seen them only as strategies to keep him blind.
“I forgive you.” Hannibal was looking down at him as he bled on the floor, and Will might have laughed if it weren’t for the searing pain in his gut.
He had been more blind than he had realised.
The air was thick with the stench of decay.
……………………………………………….
The hunting lodge smelled of wood smoke and an underlying damp.
“Our minds concoct all sorts of fantasies when we don’t want to believe something. I thought it was an obvious manipulation.”
“You claim to understand men’s minds, and yet you could not see what he offered you?” Chiyoh gave him a small cup of hot dark tea.
“He killed Abigail,” he said bitterly, his fingers burning a little from taking the cup.
“And what do you believe now he has left you his broken heart? A Sacred Heart in a chapel; a symbol of God’s compassion for suffering.”
“Hannibal is not God.”
“And yet you are remaking yourself in his image. You killed the man he wanted dead and gave me wine to drink. Are you not his disciple now?”
“If he wanted me to follow him, then why this?” Will’s hand sketched across his front.
A tear, sliding down Hannibal’s face as he whispered: “You could make it all go away…”
“Are you not following him now? You saw him in Palermo, why come to Lithuania? What did you hope to find if not his heart? You took a man’s body and made him a firefly. Was that for yourself?”
“I wanted...to elevate him.”
“Do you know what an imago is, Will?”
“A flying insect,” he had said.“ A transformation.”
It was only half the answer.
“...an image of a loved one, buried in our unconscious, carried with us all our lives.”
He looked at Chiyoh across the table; her image blurred, and he realised his eyes were full of tears.
“Is he...in love with me?”
It had taken him so long to dare to think this, to say it loud, and his chest ached as he said it; it felt as if he had ripped out his own heart and shown it to her, ragged, bleeding and dying in his hands.
Her expression looked like pity.
“He gave you a child,” she said, “and he believed you would go with him. Do you wish you had?”
She got up to heat the teapot, so she could pretend not to see the way his face twisted. It felt like more kindness than he deserved.
“I love him,” he said out loud, testing the weight of it, a question not a statement.
He knew the truth as soon as he heard himself speak.
Fear crackled through him but longing drove it away and left him gasping for breath.
For the first time, he recognised himself as the betrayer and wondered if he deserved the forgiveness Hannibal had offered.
He thought of Hannibal leaning over him, covered in blood and yet still tender, and he felt Hannibal’s grief as if it were his own; his scar burned and he understood with devastating force what he had done to earn it.
“Koibito.”
He had not understood.