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This was not, in any possible way, going as expected.
‘It will be a quick, easy job,’ Jack had told him. ‘Just get in, get a few shots for the story, and you’ll be done,’ Alana had added.
But of course, instead of narrating in front of a camera, Will was running across the jungle like his life depended on it. Because… it literally depended on it.
If someone had told Will only a few weeks before that he would be running away from a cannibalistic tribe that had somehow survived in the depths of the island’s jungle without the rest of the world knowing about them, the least he would’ve done would’ve been to laugh.
He had been sent to cover the story about a legend that asserted that an ancient treasure was buried on a mystic island. Nobody even knew from what civilization that story came, or where exactly that island was, only that it was a tale told from fathers to sons: the Golden Island and the warriors that guarded it, eating everyone who dared try to steal it.
After two days of shooting some dull scenes by the shore and going farther into the jungle, the tribe that nobody believed was real, attacked. They had been eating breakfast in relative silence when a spear had pierced Freddie Lounds through the stomach. Will had seen how his colleague and camerawoman looked at him and gripped the spear coming out of her stomach before falling from the trunk, dead.
It took them only a second to react, but when they did, hell seemed to break loose around them in an instant. The armed escort they had hired retrieved their guns and started firing while men half naked and with their skin painted with strange patterns emerged from everywhere around them. Will dodged the attack of a man with a machete twice, and fell backwards. When the guy lifted the blade for the third time, he thought he was going to die… and then someone shot the man, his dead body falling next to him. Will sat up and turned around, seeing Hannibal Lecter lowering his gun and looking at him. Will nodded to him, thanking him, and then another warrior ran towards Hannibal and they broke the eye contact. Will stood up and saw one of their guards falling at one of the warrior’s hands, who bit the man’s neck and tore the skin of his throat. He looked up at Will and ate it right there. And that’s when Will decided he had to get out of there. Now.
He managed to avoid another attack while everything around them was chaos; he saw Beverly Katz killing two of them but retreating to the jungle, Brian Zeller, their expert botanist, tried to hit one of them with a frying pan, but ended up dying at a another’s machete. Everyone around him was dying and he had no weapons to defend himself or the others. Will managed to get to the clearing’s edge, and he looked back. Hannibal was shooting in every direction but was also backing away into the jungle. Will saw four warriors coming right at him… and so he ran.
Now, Will jumped over the root of a tree and ducked to avoid a branch, and just kept running, running, running. He could hear the warrior’s shouts and screams, rousing each other to continue chasing their dinner. Chasing him. Will felt his lungs starting to burn, his vision obscuring as he tried to gulp air. He was slowing down, and he knew he would get caught at some point. He looked behind him and whimpered when he saw the leaves from the trees moving closer than before… Suddenly his world turned completely around. He was being pulled by a strong grip, so he threw a punch at his attacker as he writhed. His body then hit something hard violently, and the air he had left got sucked out of his lungs.
“What the-!”
“Silence!”
Will knew that voice, and he opened his eyes in time to see Hannibal pressing a hand to his mouth and his entire body towards him, caging him against the trunk of a tree. Will stayed still even if only because of the shock, Hannibal’s face so close to him he couldn’t even focus his features, the man’s long hair tickling him a little.
In that moment, the group of warriors emerged from the path he had been following across the jungle merely a few seconds before. Only now, they were hidden behind the tree and a few other plants. Will still shut his eyes and tried to press himself even more against the tree, wishing he could just disappear if he hoped for it enough. Hannibal leaned even closer, pressing his cheek to Will’s. They were almost holding their breath, Will hearing the quiet steps of the men against the ground as they walked just inches away from them. Thump, thump, thump, thump. One by one, the men passed, some of them still shouting words in a strange language, others walking as silent as death.
When all sounds finally died, they remained still for a few more minutes. Will could only hear his own heart thudding against his head, his ears, inside his throat… Hannibal pulled back, breathing heavily from having held his breath, and he looked around them. Will then noticed a few things; the man had his machete in the hand he was not still pressing into Will’s mouth, his shirt was torn at a few of places, and he had a couple of not too deep cuts on his nose and on his right cheekbone, a little blood smudged in his cheek.
Will finally reacted, swatting his hand away from his mouth and shoving him hard on his chest.
“You fucking knew!” he accused him.
“Will, lower your voice, they might still-”
“Don’t you Will me,” he said, but he did lower his voice. “I knew something was up with you and your partner; you didn’t accept to come here because you wanted to help us. And when you told me you really believed the Golden Island existed…”
Hannibal remained silent, and Will knew he was right.
When Jack had talked to him about this legend and the program they would do for the show, Hannibal’s name had instantly been out of Will’s lips, since he knew him by reputation, as almost the rest of the world did. But Will had also read every article he had found about him; about how he had discovered a few hidden places and treasures and had gained a name in such a little time after having changed from being a surgeon to being an explorer. And yet, despite being almost a celebrity, the man was a mystery for everyone. Will had even had to resort to asking a few favors to manage to contact him. As soon as he had told Hannibal about the Golden Island expedition, he had instantly accepted.
In the journey to get there, Will had gotten to know Hannibal better, and he had found an interesting person to say the least. They had spent together most of their time in the boat, working their assigned chores, cooking together for the rest of the crew when it was their turn – and since Hannibal seemed to like that activity and he was really, really good, they did it more often than anyone else - and sharing glasses of wine and long conversations on the deck until late in the night, when the rest of the group was already sound asleep. But as he got to know the man, Will had started to see something he feared and longed for in the other man; a darkness that he recognized all too well. But when they had arrived, Will noticed that Hannibal had been alert from the first moment, scanning their surroundings all the time like he knew something was going to happen, never leaving his gun or machete out of his reach… And now Will’s suspicions had been confirmed.
“Come on. We have to find a place to rest and then we need to find the rest of the group… if there’s still anyone else alive,” Hannibal said, ignoring his accusation.
Will sighed, because as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Hannibal was right. And in that moment, their priority was not fighting each other. They really needed to find the rest of the group, but for now, Hannibal was the only living person that wasn’t a crazy cannibal chasing him to eat his raw flesh. And so, Will nodded reluctantly.
“Fine… But you have a machete, so give me your gun,” he said quickly, and he extended his arm and nodded towards the handgun on the holster around his shoulders.
Hannibal raised both eyebrows and Will simply stared at him, and so he finally took the gun out and turned it over to give him the handle first. Will took it, but when he was going to pull it towards him, Hannibal gripped it tighter.
“You know how to use this, right?”
Will huffed and tugged the gun from the other’s hand. “Please.”
“Alright. But be careful,” Hannibal asked him as he turned the gun around in his hand to examine it.
“I’m always careful…”
Will circled him and started walking away, but when he turned, he tripped on a root that stood out from the ground. He held onto the trunk of the tree and managed to balance the gun in his hand so it wouldn’t fall. When he turned, blushing from chest to ears, Hannibal was observing him with his eyebrows raised.
“Starting now,” he shrugged, as if nothing had happened.
Will started walking again, this time looking down to the ground and clutching the gun, hearing Hannibal following him a moment later.
They went the opposite way the group of warriors had gone. Will eventually had to let Hannibal go first, so he could open a path with his machete among the thick foliage. When they finally found cave near the shore, Will sped up to go first, and he almost collapsed over the first rock he saw. Hannibal entered behind him, examining the space around them warily and finally lowering the machete as he relaxed slightly.
“You’re injured.”
Hannibal’s words brought him to reality once again, and he followed Hannibal’s gaze, fixed on his own thigh. He didn’t remember hurting himself and it didn’t look like anything serious, but behind the little rip on his jeans he was, indeed, bleeding. He pressed two fingers into it and flinched. He also found another
wound on his left arm, but neither of them looked that serious.
“I’m fine,” he replied as he brushed the blood on his pants.
Hannibal approached him and offered him a canteen with water, which he took immediately to gulp twice. The liquid was warm and tasted awful, but he still groaned a little as he controlled himself not to drink a third time.
Hannibal knelt beside him on one knee, and Will frowned, not knowing what he was doing. But when he took the sleeve of Will’s shirt and made a quick cut on the fabric at his biceps with the machete, he moved backwards.
“Hey!” he said, gripping his torn shirt.
Hannibal lowered the blade and looked at him tilting his head.
“I said I’m fine; they almost don’t even hurt.”
“It’s not a matter of pain level. I need to treat and wrap your wounds, otherwise they could get infected, and I don’t want to have to deal with an entire tribe trying to kill us and having to carry you senseless across the jungle.”
Will held his gaze for a long time, challenging, but finally gave up and let go of his sleeve, moving closer to him again with a sigh.
“You wouldn’t carry me senseless across the jungle; you probably would leave me at the first opportunity you had,” Will muttered bitterly as Hannibal completed cutting his sleeve completely.
“I already had an opportunity to leave you,” Hannibal stated matter-of-factly.
Will looked at him again, and he found no trace of mockery in Hannibal’s eyes. He was completely serious and, after all, completely right.
After that, Will let Hannibal work as he did the same with his other sleeve. Hannibal began with the wound there, and after turning his shirt into long strips, he cleaned the wound as best as he could with what they had and wrapped most of one of the shirt’s sleeves around it.
When he finished with that one, Will checked the knot absent-mindedly as Hannibal cut the second sleeve into strips.
“Take off your pants,” he said then.
Will glared at him, but Hannibal seemed focused on the fabric in this hands.
“I can’t clean your wound and bandage it through your jeans,” Hannibal added without looking up at him even though he probably saw that he wasn’t moving.
Will considered telling him no, but once again, he huffed and gave up. He stood up enough to unzip his pants and pull them down to his knees. When he sat again on the rock, Hannibal straightened and lifted his hand, but didn’t touch him.
“May I?”
“You may,” Will answered wryly.
Hannibal then started cleaning the wound with a piece of the sleeve and the remaining water, and then proceeded to bandage it like the other one. Will looked away when he felt Hannibal’s hands on his skin.
He remembered the nights on the boat, and the realization that had hit him one day, that he definitely had a little crush on the mysterious, long-haired treasure hunter. But in that moment he felt betrayed above all, and so he focused on that instead.
“Were you gonna tell me- us?” he asked him.
“That I knew that the legend and the guardians were real?” Hannibal asked as his deft fingers worked over his thigh.
“Yeah, exactly that.”
“Yes. At some point,” Hannibal said, shrugging a little.
Will chuckled bitterly. “Exactly when one of those cannibal fuckers were chewing on our skin, or just a little before?”
Hannibal finished working on the bandage and looked up at him with a serious expression as Will stood up, pulling his pants up over the improvised bandage and buttoning them.
“I told you that I was a surgeon before, but I didn’t tell you why I left my career and focused solely on looking for these legends,” Will sat on the rock again, remembering that he had told him about his previous job in one of their conversations, but not about that. He wasn’t the only curious one, that detail being what everyone wondered, and having heard the armed men whispering about him. “My parents used to travel quite a lot. When me and my little sister were born, they decided to not stop traveling, and so they took us everywhere.”
Hannibal made a pause, and Will waited, seeing the nostalgic gleam in his eyes.
“The thing is, they loved going to remote places; if they were uncharted territories, places nobody had gone to before, they liked them even more. When they started taking us, they just hired more explorers, more armed escort… and that’s what they did when we came to this island.”
Will felt his stomach churning at the confession, and what that implied, but didn’t say anything, letting him speak.
“They attacked like they did now, killing my parents and the escort first, and then the explorers… And then they took me and my sister,” Hannibal said, and Will saw him swallowing with difficulty before he kept talking. “They kept us alive while they ate some of the bodies from our group. And when their food ran out, they took my sister.”
“No…” Will said in a whisper, feeling a shiver going through his spine.
Will stayed completely still as Hannibal looked down, a long lock of ashen hair framing his face for a moment.
“They ate her and… fed her to me, too, so I wouldn’t die before it was time to consume me, too,” Hannibal said, and when he looked up again, Will felt his heart tightening at the look in his eyes. He swallowed, but the lump in his throat remained. “In the end, I managed to escape through an oversight of the guards. I found that one of the explorers from our expedition had survived, and he had been hiding close to their camp in case someone else made it out alive. We escaped in the boat we had arrived in, getting out of here a fast as we could.”
They stayed silent for a long moment. Will felt the need to reach out and take Hannibal’s hand, to comfort him, but he looked down instead for a moment.
“When we made it safely back to civilization, we told what had happened and they sent people to search for the island… but nobody found it. They thought the explorer was crazy, and that I was just a child with an overactive imagination that had believed what he had been told. They closed the case, and nobody ever looked for the remains of my parents or my sister. When I was old enough to travel, I started searching it on my own… but I couldn’t find it, either,” Hannibal sighed then, shaking his head slightly. “This island… is not normal. It’s like it’s protected with some kind of magic, and it’s only found when it wants to be found. That’s why I decided to leave my job and dedicate myself completely to find this, to show the world that it did exist, and we weren’t crazy. That my parents and sister hadn’t died in a normal accident like everyone thought.”
“I’m so sorry…”
Hannibal looked at him, and Will held his gaze. After a moment, Hannibal smiled a little.
“It’s all right. I didn’t tell any of you because I knew you would think I was crazy unless you saw it for yourselves.”
Will nodded, because that was probably what would’ve happened. Who would believe this was real unless they had been chased by the tribe of warriors?
Hannibal stood up then, the intense moment breaking.
After resting a little and eating a few cookies that had more or less survived in Hannibal’s belt pouch, they decided to return to their camp. What they found made Will’s stomach turn over. The tents were completely destroyed, along with everything they had brought. There was blood everywhere but he didn’t find any bodies, and he knew well the reason. But when he moved away one of the tent’s flaps, he found Freddie Lounds, her red hair the same color as the blood around her body. Will turned around and covered her again, closing his eyes not to relive the moment of her death in his mind. He had already seen enough to also see it over and over.
“Will,” Hannibal’s hand on his arm brought him back, and he gasped as he focused on his face. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah… yes,” he nodded, taking a deep breath. “Did you find anybody else?” he asked him, and Hannibal shook his head, so Will tilted his head. “Well. Maybe not seeing more bodies is good.”
Will observed the man’s features as he scanned the camp with his gaze, and he tried to imagine a much smaller, younger version of him in this very same place, in this same situation, years ago.
Hannibal crouched next to a torn tent, and searched between the things there. Will realized that had been Bedelia’s tent, and he wondered once again what was up with Hannibal’s partner.
When he had arrived to the port the first day the expedition had met, Will had been a little disappointed at finally meeting Hannibal Lecter and find him accompanied by a woman. He had thought they were a couple, but now he wasn’t sure at all that they were together-together. Not that it was any of his business, or that it mattered. So what if his crush on the explorer had only gotten worse in that trip. It wasn’t as if he would have any chance at anything other than a professional relationship with the man, anyway.
Will returned to reality once again, and he sighed as he went to the tent that had been his. He found one of their cameras completely wrecked, some their provisions inedible, and two bottled waters; one of them was broken and empty, but the second was just dented, and had water inside. He took a sip from one and then turned around as he closed it.
“Maybe we should go to the river, fill the bottles we can find.”
He gazed at Hannibal when the other didn’t answer, and when he saw him tense and stare at one specific point of the jungle, Will’s heartbeat accelerated as he drew the gun from his pants and took the safety off in the same movement. He heard then something approaching them, so he pointed the gun to the same place Hannibal had been looking at. The sound approached them, a couple of plants moved… In that moment something crashed into him and pushed him aside, and for the second time that day, Hannibal pressed him against a tree. He didn’t protest that time, holding his breath with his gun trapped between both of their bodies as the other tensed when the sound of footsteps grew closer and closer…
“Hannibal?”
The familiar melodic voice made both of them relax immediately, Hannibal pulling back only slightly so.
“We’re here,” he told Bedelia.
Will tried to move, but Hannibal didn’t, staring him down as close as he was. Will held his gaze, and when the other just smirked a little, he hit him carefully on the shoulder.
“Are you going to keep pushing me into trees?”
Hannibal finally moved back without answering him, and they went out to the clearing again. Bedelia was waiting there, and she raised an eyebrow at seeing both of them.
“Were you enjoying yourselves?”
Will blushed a little, but he glared at her. Hannibal didn’t even seem to listen to her.
“Did you find any other survivors?”
“No. I saw Katz getting away from the camp, but five warriors were chasing her, so I doubt she made it too far,” she said.
Will remembered Beverly, their biologist, the only other person apart from Hannibal that Will had truly liked from the entire expedition. He felt a surge of anger washing through him at how Bedelia was talking about her in that unaffected way, as if she was commenting on the weather.
“Although…”
She approached them and smiled enigmatically.
“Although?” Hannibal asked.
“I know where they came from.”
“The… warriors?” Will asked, frowning. Bedelia looked at him only a second, and she nodded when she gazed at Hannibal again, as if she wasn’t talking to him.
“I followed two of them, dragging parts of the body of one of the guards.”
Will closed his eyes for a moment, seeing the image in his head as clearly as if he had seen them himself. He saw them dragging the body away from the camp as if it was merely a dead animal, using one of their large machetes to cut the limbs… He opened his eyes and gasped, turning away and bending over, supporting his hands on his knees. He took a couple of deep breaths, and then he felt a hand on his back.
“Will?”
“Fine. I’m… fine,” he nodded, but he had to take another deep breath.
When he straightened, he bumped his shoulder into Hannibal’s chest, and so he awkwardly moved away.
“Hannibal, are you listening to me?” Bedelia said, ignoring completely Will’s state. “I know where it is.”
Will turned to her again and observed Hannibal tilting his head slightly. Bedelia nodded, as if he knew what she was thinking.
“It’s right there.”
“What is right there?” Will asked before he could stop himself.
Bedelia looked at him as if he had asked a stupid thing.
“The gold, Will,” Hannibal explained, and he suddenly felt stupid.
“The Golden Island…” he said, running a hand across his face. “It’s literally gold?”
“My parents found a few pieces of gold while we were here, in the river. I figured there would be a lot more, and that was the treasure.”
“And you were right,” Bedelia said, smiling smugly to herself.
Will suddenly understood the entire legend. The story said a group of warriors were there to protect The Golden Island. He had figured it was just a fancy name, but it wasn’t. There was gold in the island, and that’s what the tribe was protecting.
“Well? Let’s go!” Bedelia said, pointing towards the place she had appeared through.
“Woah, hold on,” Will raised, both hands. “You don’t mean to go to the place they came from, right…?”
“Of course I do,” Bedelia said, narrowing her eyes. “Didn’t you hear me about the gold?”
“Didn’t you hear the army of cannibal warriors?” Will responded.
Bedelia opened her mouth to say something else, but in that moment he saw something moving between the plants. Will raised his gun out of instinct, but before he could even think about shooting, a sharp pain bit him in the neck. He lifted his other hand to brush the spot, and frowned when he felt his limbs going limp. The last thing he saw before darkness surrounded him was Hannibal trying to grab him.
When he woke up, he groaned as he listened to his heart pounding inside his head in a constant rhythm. Boom, boom, boom.
“Will…”
He opened his eyes and was going to lift his hand to run it across his face, but he couldn’t move either of them. He tried to focus on what was in front of him, but all he could see was a dark wall.
“Will.”
Will’s numbed mind finally filtered Hannibal’s voice and what was happening. He tried to move his hands and found that they were tied together tightly around a wooden post. He clenched and unclenched his fingers and touched… another body. He felt then someone else’s hands pressing to his back.
“Are you awake?” Hannibal asked him.
“I… am. I’m awake. What the hell…?”
He looked to the side, and he saw Bedelia tied to another post close by… and tied right behind her, was Beverly.
“Bev?”
“Hey, Will…” she said, pursing her lips. She had a few scratches in her face, but otherwise seemed okay. Alive. “Glad to see you, although I’d rather if it was in different circumstances.”
“Yeah… right back at you,” Will agreed.
Hannibal pressed his fingers again into his back, and Will arched it.
“Stay still,” Hannibal said in a whisper.
Will understood then what he was doing; he was trying to loosen the knot. He turned to the opposite side, and his stomach turned upside down. They were inside of what looked like a big, spacious cave, and while they were in a corner of the same, the center was filled with people: with the tribe of cannibal warriors. There were at least thirty that he could see, and they seemed to be celebrating, some of them dancing and jumping in circles, a few of them hitting a sort of drums rhythmically – which was what he had been hearing at waking up.
Will swallowed, his mind clearing up as he realized what the tribe was celebrating; they were getting ready to eat. And dinner for them wasn’t exactly coconuts from the jungle.
Despite the situation, Will froze over what he was seeing: the walls of the cave shone, rivulets of gold covering them from the ground to the top. It was truly breathtaking, but he forced himself to return to reality.
“Hannibal…” Will whispered, even though he wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell him. In that moment Hannibal’s hand hit him a little harder than before.
Will’s heart hammered inside his chest as Hannibal freed himself from the rope. Then, without moving at all, he started working on Will’s wrists. When he felt the rope loosening around him, he took them off and rubbed at his wrists as he breathed out, but didn’t move.
“We need to free them,” Will said, looking at Beverly, but she raised her hand a little, already free, and waved at him.
“We’ve been waiting for you guys to catch up for a while. But we still need a plan to get out of here.”
“They didn’t take my gun,” Bedelia whispered.
Will and Hannibal turned to her at the same time, and she moved one of her feet, covered by mountain boots. She raised an eyebrow. Beverly shrugged, a little impressed.
“Okay, so we have a gun,” Beverly said, and she looked from Will to Hannibal. “Now what…?”
They looked at each other for a few seconds, the drums resonating loudly between the cave’s walls. And then, Will felt Hannibal’s hands moving again against his back.
“I have an idea,” Hannibal said.
Will turned around as much as he could, and he saw the shadow of a smirk on his lips.
The idea was not, in retrospect, the best idea ever. But since none of them could think of anything better, it was what they had.
Bedelia readied her gun, making sure it was loaded and taking off the safety. Hannibal would go with her, being the biggest in build and the one that seemed the strongest. Beverly and Will, however, were slowly crawling from the place where they had been left in the cave, to the point where their guns were, piled in a corner against the walls. Since the cave was circular, but had a sort of configuration of tents and posts, where these people apparently lived, they were moving as quickly and silently as they could from the back of one of those tents to the next.
“Sure… Go for the weapons, distract the cannibals, how hard can that be?” Will said, panting behind one of the tents.
He peeked out from the edge and saw a woman carrying a spear walking by too close to them, and so he hid again, his heartbeat accelerating.
Beverly hit him in the arm when the woman passed, and they kept advancing. When they only had a small stretch to the place where their weapons were, they looked back to where Hannibal and Bedelia were waiting, and Will nodded to them.
Bedelia went out first followed by Hannibal, and when the first tribesmen noticed them, she pointed her gun to the roof and shot.
The music and shouts stopped immediately, all eyes focusing on the origin of the noise, and so Will and Beverly knew that was their cue; they ran towards the weapons.
“Stay back, you filthy, little face eaters!” Bedelia warned them.
Will retrieved the gun Hannibal had given to him and checked the ammo while Beverly took her automatic gun and did the same. In that moment he heard another shot, and they turned around to see a warrior that had gotten too close falling dead. The rest of the tribe looked surprised, some of them annoyed, others even amused. None of them looked afraid, so Will turned around and hurried. He took Hannibal’s machete and Beverly grabbed another handgun from the pile of guns that had belonged to the other armed escort, and a belt with grenades and knives around it. As soon as they were done there, they stood up with their guns up and Hannibal gestured at Bedelia.
“Not a single… movement,” Bedelia said, even if the men probably couldn’t understand a word. But her tone of voice and the gun pointing at their heads was universal language.
Hannibal and her started moving towards them, and so Will and Beverly also advanced towards the only tunnel that led out of the cave. When they were approaching them, a group of warriors laughed as they started walking to them, not very concerned about their escaping attempt.
“Are you ready to shoot and run…?” Hannibal asked when they were close enough to hear each other.
Beverly threw him the extra gun she had taken in answer, and Will passed him the machete, nodding at him briefly when their eyes met for a second. They got to the tunnel entrance with their guns pointing at the others. One of the tribesmen chuckled, another imitated them putting his hands together in front of him as if it was a gun, mocking them.
“I’m gonna leave them a little present,” Beverly said, taking a grenade from the belt and lifting it. “As soon as we’re through, I’m gonna blow the tunnel.
“What? You’re going to kill us!” Will said in an anxious whisper.
“Do it,” Hannibal said, shifting a little closer to the tunnel entrance and swinging the machete in the hand that wasn’t pointing the gun up.
“Ready?” Beverly asked.
Will wanted to say no; he didn’t say anything. Beverly took the safety off the grenade at the same time that a group of the warriors finally lurched towards them, and so they ran. They shot at the same time, looking back only briefly to see the first men fall.
“Fore!” Beverly yelled, and Will saw the grenade flying above them.
“Come on, it’s almost impossible that-” Will started saying. The explosion made them crouch a little, but they kept running and Will looked behind them. The tunnel wasn’t entirely closed, but enough rocks had fallen to stall most of the tribe. “Oh, you did it!”
They went out of the tunnel and into another rounded part of the cave, the walls equally gleaming with the gold. They killed the few warriors that had been ahead of the explosion, and then kept going towards the only tunnels they found. At least, Will thought, it wasn’t a labyrinth in which they could’ve gotten lost very easily. When they went out of one of the tunnels and saw that they were finally next to the exit, Will smiled. To reach it, they would have to climb a very sloped uphill. They could already hear the water from what sounded like a small waterfall, a couple of trees and plants growing inside the cave and water dripping from the outside down the hill.
Beverly groaned a little as she hung the automatic weapon’s strap on her shoulders, and so they started climbing.
“You’re so going to pay for my therapy if we make it out of here!” Will said to nobody in particular as he started digging his hands and feet into the slippery mud.
They could hear the shouts of the tribesmen trying to reach them, and Will guessed the demolished tunnel would only stop them for a little time having so many hands and being so stubborn in their duty to protect the island from foreigners.
When he was close to reaching the top, he saw Beverly already climbing it, and Hannibal right behind her.
“Go to the boat; get it ready to get out of here!” Hannibal told her, and Beverly nodded after a second, disappearing towards the exit, across the wall of water falling in front of it.
Will pushed with both feet to reach the top, and he propelled himself up with both hands… and then, something suddenly hit him in the chest. Will lost his balance and fell on his side, rolling down the hill. He reached out frantically and grabbed a protruding root, the only thing that stopped him from keeping rolling all the way down. He looked up and saw Bedelia at the top, pointing her gun at him with a smug smile curling her lips up.
“Stay right there,” she threatened.
“What the…” he breathed out.
He saw in that moment Hannibal turning around and seeing what had happened, and so he returned to the edge and crouched.
“Will?!”
“Stay back, Hannibal.”
“What exactly are you doing?” Hannibal asked her, looking from her to Will where he was hanging from the root, his palm starting to get wet with the water that dripped down.
“This is the perfect opportunity, Hannibal. Look around you, look at these walls! We can take just some of this and we’ll be rich. And he’s the perfect bait; they’ll be distracted tearing him apart while we get away.”
Will felt his hand sliding more, and he grunted as he tried to hold onto it with his other hand, gaining a little balance.
“Stay right there!” she yelled at him.
“Bedelia…” Hannibal said as he stood up, and she turned to him baring her teeth. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft for this,” she said waving the gun towards Will.
He groaned as he slid further down, and she looked at him again. Will saw how ready she was to shoot at him, how much she wanted to do it.
“You’re right,” Hannibal said then.
Will turned to him, his arms starting to tremble from the effort. Hannibal winked at him, and so he pursed his lips, trying to hold on. Bedelia turned to Hannibal again, but kept pointing her gun at Will. She smiled a little as Hannibal approached her.
“He’s the perfect bait. But we need to hurry; they will be here any minute. Leave him hanging there, they’ll get him,” he said, taking her hand with the gun and moving it away slowly.
She finally nodded and lowered the gun. As soon as she did, Hannibal raised his hand and put it on her shoulder, an almost caring gesture. Hannibal lifted his machete and sliced her throat in a slow, measured movement.
It took her a second to realize what was happening, and the gun fell from her hand as she lifted both of them to her neck, trying to stop the blood in vain. She collapsed on her knees, gurgling as the blood stained the ground and Hannibal’s shoes.
As soon as she fell to her side, Hannibal knelt and set down the machete before reaching out to him. Will immediately pushed himself up and took his hand, climbing to the top with his help. When he finally did, he collapsed on the ground, panting. Hannibal held him with both hands on his arms, and so Will looked up at him.
“You killed her…” he said, but he found that he wasn’t horrified; he was surprised. “For me.”
“I did. She wanted to kill you.”
Will nodded, and he looked at Bedelia’s now lifeless body, her widened eyes. He felt no sympathy for her at all, and he even felt a surge of pride, knowing she was dead now and he was still alive, breathing. Hannibal had killed her so Will could keep living, and so he smiled weakly at him.
In that moment, the voices of the warriors reached them from the cave, and they both stood up at the same time, helping each other. Hannibal retrieved his machete, and Will took Bedelia’s gun from the ground. The first men emerged from the tunnel in that moment, and Will shot at the first of them gritting his teeth before Hannibal circled his waist and dragged him to the exit.
They ran together as fast as they could across the jungle, Will shooting and hitting some of them until he ran out of bullets in both Bedelia’s and his gun. When they made it past the jungle and saw the boat by the shore, he smiled. Beverly waved at them from the deck.
“Come on!”
They ran to her, and she shot at the fastest warriors from the deck. When they finally made it to the water, the warriors suddenly stopped running towards them, standing in a line as if Hannibal and Will had gone inside a protective bubble into which they couldn’t reach. Or most probably, Will thought, they had gone out of the place, as if the magic surrounding the island only reached up to the shore.
Will was the first to reach the boat and climb the stairs in the hull. Once he reached the gunwale, Beverly helped him get in, and Will turned to help Hannibal as she ran to the cabin. Will pulled Hannibal towards him and they slumped down as soon as he was inside.
“Bedelia?” she asked, and Will shook his head.
“Get us out of here!” Will yelled at her.
The boat finally started moving, and Will relaxed completely on the floor, Hannibal half sprawled over him. They stayed like that as the wind started whooshing above them, the water splashing them.
Will laughed then, and Hannibal propped himself over his elbow to look down at him with the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Well… that wasn’t too bad, we could do it again,” Will said, and he shook his head at himself.
Will became suddenly aware of how close they were, one of Hannibal’s legs entwined with Will’s, Hannibal’s stomach against Will’s side and his long hair almost brushing his face. Will’s eyes went from Hannibal’s hazel ones down to his blood-spattered cheeks and to his slightly parted lips, and so he wet his own in a reflex. Will realized he was staring after a couple of seconds, and so he cleared his throat, shifting. Hannibal rolled over and got up, helping Will when he was on his feet.
Will went to the cabin and as soon as he entered, Beverly’s body crashed against his in a tight hug.
“I’m so glad you’re alive, Graham.”
Will laughed and hugged her too. “I’m glad you’re alive, too, Katz.”
Will helped her set the boat, although she had made a pretty good job herself. Since now they were just three people – from their expedition of twelve -, they would have to be more alert than they had been on the way there. When they were sufficiently far away from the damn island, Will left Beverly in the cabin and returned to Hannibal. He was still on the deck, sitting on the bench that looked to the stern, and Will sat beside him with a tired sigh. Now that the adrenalin was getting out of their systems, he realized that not only the wounds hurt; his entire body ached.
They remained silent for a long moment, looking at the distant silhouette of the island in the horizon.
“Thank you,” Will said then, and he saw Hannibal turning to him out of the corner of his eye. Will looked at him too after a second. “For saving me. And… I’m sorry.”
“I wanted you alive,” he said, and Will smiled. It was such a strange thing to say, and yet it sounded so honest, so out of the ordinary. As if wanting people to stay alive was not something Hannibal was used to want. “But why are you sorry?”
Will pursed his lips, and he nodded towards the island.
“You didn’t get your proof of the island’s existence.”
Hannibal tilted his head, observing him. He looked him up and down, and when Hannibal’s gaze returned to Will’s eyes, he sighed quietly.
“Maybe I realized I don’t care that much whether the rest of the world believes me or not,” he said, and he raised a hand after that. He cupped Will’s neck, and he felt his heart beating loudly inside his chest as Hannibal brushed his thumb over his jaw. “Maybe I’ve realized there are more important things.”
Will’s eyes dropped to his lips as he breathed out, and Hannibal finally leaned in to kiss him. Their lips touched softly at first, Hannibal brushing Will’s upper one with his own. When he sucked at his lip in earnest, Will groaned and tilted his head then to deepen it, letting out another soft sound when their tongues met.
When they broke the kiss out of breath, Will chuckled happily, leaning his forehead into Hannibal’s before pulling back and looking at him with a smile. Hannibal’s lips were wet and his mouth curved upwards, and Will bit his lower lip, containing himself not to lean towards him again.
The sound of someone clearing their throat made them turn around, and Will saw Beverly standing in the deck with her lips pursed and a poorly contained smile.
“Can you guys watch the cabin? I think I need to take a shower to get the rests of cannibal brains off of me,” she said, pointing at herself.
Will nodded, and he went to the cabin followed by Hannibal. When Beverly went to the cabin downstairs, Hannibal leaned against the doorframe, staring at him. When he didn’t look away for a few minutes, Will raised an eyebrow.
“What?” he asked, although the smile that hadn’t left his lips betrayed him.
“Nothing. Just… I’ve been wanting to do that for far too long.”
“Really?” Will asked, genuinely surprised but feeling a warm thing in his stomach at knowing he hadn’t been the only one that had liked the other. “Well, you could… I don’t know. Do it again,” Will said, shrugging as if he wasn’t feeling like his legs would turn into mush at any time.
Hannibal smiled again, and he approached him. He ran a hand through Will’s short hair, and cupped his cheek. Will circled his waist with an arm and pulled him closer, burying his other hand against his nape, in his long hair. Will was the one to lean in that time, nuzzling into his jaw before pressing his lips to Hannibal’s for another kiss that left him feeling even more shaky than a tribe of cannibal warriors chasing him across the jungle.
When they pulled back, Hannibal stayed beside him, pressing his mouth into Will’s hairline as he sighed and looked at the horizon. The sun was setting, and the sky was painted in red and orange colors, contrasting with the blue of the sea.
Will felt his throat tightening, and he had to clear his throat not to shed any tears.
“Is there something wrong?” Hannibal asked him, pulling back.
Will turned a little to look at him and shook his head, smiling.
“No, it’s just… It’s beautiful.”
Will reached out to take Hannibal’s hand, and he entwined their hands together.