Chapter Text
The air is damp with the promise of rain as they make their way back to the street to hail a taxi. The trees lining the concrete walkway whisper as they pass.
“He looked back,” Will says, abruptly. “After all that, he looked back. You’d think he could manage a little self-control.”
“The story would not be so satisfying if it ended the way you suggest,” Hannibal counters, pausing a few feet from the street’s edge to admire the flowers growing wild between the sidewalk and the road. It’s difficult to make out their color in the dark.
“Satisfying?” Will snorts, and buries his hand in his pockets despite the relatively warm night air. His eyes snap back to Hannibal’s. “Would you look back? If I was trapped in the Underworld.”
Hannibal blinks. He can’t quite give the question the consideration it deserves when Will has cast himself in the role of Eurydice and Hannibal in that of Orpheus. Spouses, bound beyond death.
He wonders if escaping from the sea counts as escaping the grasp of Hades.
Will shakes his head and smiles mirthlessly. “You’d look back,” he says in a light tone, but Hannibal hears the weight behind it. The sadness. The implication that there will be no joy when they reach their fated end, sundered forever by gods and weakness.
But Will has overlooked the key facts. He has assumed, correctly, that Hannibal would follow him, even to the mouth of hell. But what he has neglected to consider is that if Hannibal were so foolish as to lose Will, he would not abscond into the heavens alone.
He would break down the gates of Hades a second time.
But here on the side of a busy street is not the time or the place to discuss something so important. Particularly not when Will is bent on fatalistic imaginings. Their road to joy must be accomplished in steps rather than leaps. Grand gestures and leaps literal and metaphorical have gotten them nowhere.
Hannibal decides to begin by prescribing a lighter mood.
“"Did you die in this suit?” he asks flatly, eyeing the suit in question. Will has settled into the unfamiliar fabric over the course of the evening, and he looks almost comfortable now. He’s certainly drawing a few appreciative looks from passersby.
Will frowns. “What?”
“Are you wearing this suit? In the Underworld, Will.”
“I don't see how that's relevant —“
“It's very relevant. It may determine whether or not I can keep from looking at you.” He steps forward to hail a taxi, feeling rather than seeing Will’s shock.
“You'd sentence me to an eternity with Hades. For a suit.” It’s the flat monotone that Will retreats into when he isn’t able to process his thoughts and emotions adequately. Sometimes this tone distills into affection; on other occasions, it transforms into anger.
“It’s an exquisite suit,” Hannibal replies, smiling as Will vacillates rapidly between irritation and a laugh. A taxi finally alights at the curb beside them.
“How do you say ‘I hate you’ in Italian?” Will wonders aloud, but the roots of his bitter tone don’t run deep.
Hannibal doesn’t think before he replies. “O, se ciò negherammi empio destino, rimarrò teco in compagnia di morte.”
Will freezes with his hand on the handle of the taxi’s door and Hannibal knows he recognizes Orpheus’ promise to remain with Eurydice, anywhere and always.
Oh, if wicked destiny refuses me this, I will stay with you in the company of death.
Will takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and climbs into the cab.
===
Will has spent a good portion of his life contemplating appropriate responses to social stimuli that didn’t seem to stump anyone else. Smiling is good, eye contact advisable, polite manners essential.
He wonders what the appropriate response might be to a statement of dedication that involves a promise to remain together even in hell.
Because that worked out so well for Orpheus and Eurydice.
Will sighs and tugs off his glasses, rubbing at his eyes and wondering why Hannibal hasn’t decided to kill him yet. If his life is going to be one long carnival ride, he’d just as soon get off now.
But Hannibal isn’t regarding him with irritation or impatience when he shoves his glasses back into place and turns to look at him. His eyes are full of…anticipation.
“I know you’ve been comfortable in Florence,” Hannibal begins, leaning toward Will just slightly. “But I would like to move on to Milan.”
Will’s equilibrium tilts a little and his world spins. He’d been waiting for Hannibal to break out of their temporary routine. Maybe this was it — the moment he insists on going back to old habits. Back to hunting and eating and everything that Will refuses to stomach ever again. He knows what this is — an effort to involve Will in his lifestyle, to make him a captive and a monarch in a hell of their own making. He remembers Persephone’s smile, her ringing voice, and feels nauseous.
“Why?” he asks, forcing his voice to remain level.
Hannibal tilts his head, studying him. “To see the opera, of course. I would like to show you a proper opera house of the Old World.” Before Will can process this extraordinary statement, Hannibal continues, in a quieter tone. “There are many things I would like to show you, Will.”
Will feels the breathless, stomach-twisting sensation that accompanied their fall from the cliff over the Chesapeake. It was a weightless feeling, a lightheaded rush of adrenaline…
And of hope.
Maybe this bargain isn’t like Persephone’s — love at the cost of the sun. Maybe there are paths out of the Underworld, even if Orpheus and Eurydice stumbled on the way up.
Pity today, and love, both triumph in Hades.
He lets himself wonder, just for a moment, if maybe this will work.
“Alright,” he says, rasping through the sudden tightness in his throat. He can’t identify the emotion constricting him until he feels the involuntary smile tugging at his lips. “Show me.”
===
Hannibal isn’t sure whether it will rain. The air seems heavy with the possibility, but the only thing drifting in the wind’s grip are leaves and flower petals coaxed from the grass and the trees. Will seems lighter when they step onto the sidewalk in front of their flat, and he even smiles before disappearing through their doorway. The taxi pulls away, leaving Hannibal alone in the semi-dark of the street. The light of their living room flashes on one floor above.
He lingers in the street, breathing in the scents of flowers and trees and rain along with the less appealing aroma of the engine oil dripping from a nearby car and the decay wafting from the gutter by his feet.
Hannibal wonders whether Will is Apollo, golden and merciful, beckoning him up into the heavens for a lifetime of music and solace and stars, or Eurydice, trailing sorrow and hopeless shadows into the Underworld, never to return. He wonders about the odds of exploring or leaving the Underworld together, wonders whether their journey will be a descent or an ascension.
He watches Will’s shadow drift by their window and decides that it doesn't matter. He will follow him regardless. Into the heavens or into the depth of Hades itself. In life, in death, across the River Styx...
Or upward, into the land of the living.