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The first petals appeared mere days after Hannibal had received the news of Will’s marriage.
Alana had been the one to tell him, looking insufferably smug, not even trying to pretend that she didn’t enjoy seeing the brief flicker of jealousy and grief on Hannibal’s face before he got his placid mask back in place.
Though the abrupt delivery of this news had caught Hannibal off-guard, the news itself wasn’t completely unexpected—Hannibal had yet to receive any correspondence from Will since he had surrendered, not even a letter asking him to stop sending letters (he sent at least one a week, often more). Clearly, Will was determined to play the losing game of denying himself his true nature for as long as he possibly could, and marriage to a nice, normal woman was an obvious step to take in attempting to achieve that goal.
But that was fine. Will could play house, could put together his apple pie family with no place for Hannibal in it, for as long as he wanted. Hannibal could wait. He would wait months, years, decades if that’s what it took. Will would come crawling back to him eventually, Hannibal was certain—it was just a matter of waiting him out.
So no, the news of Will’s marriage had not surprised him.
The petals did, though.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To call what Hannibal coughed up 3 days after the news of Will’s marriage “petals” may be doing it a disservice. It was, in fact, a full flower—though a tiny one—and soft purple in color. Hannibal recognized it as heliotrope.
Thinking fast, he quickly hid the tiny flower in his jumpsuit, hoping that whoever was on the camera at the moment hadn't noticed anything. Knowledge is power, after all, and Hannibal planned to keep this development to himself for as long as he could.
Although the sudden appearance of the petals surprised him, there was no doubt in his mind as to what was going on. He’d briefly studied Hanahaki disease as a medical student, scoffing internally at its dramatics. Only fools could love somebody so hard that it killed them—there was simply nobody out there who was worth such an all-consuming passion.
That, of course, had been before he met Will.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At first, the disease progressed slowly—for months, Hannibal only coughed up a tiny heliotrope flower every few days. He did his best to put the condition to the back of his mind—perhaps, if he ignored it, refused to recognize its significance, it would fail to progress, or even go away on its own.
Because he was supposed to have time. He had no problem waiting on Will indefinitely, but if his condition worsened he’d have to acknowledge that he now had a time limit.
Hannibal continued to send Will letters, and he continued to receive no response.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was midway through month four of his affliction when Hannibal’s symptoms began to become… unmanageable. The flowers, which used to come up clean, now came up stained with tiny droplets of blood. His throat constantly felt scratchy and sore, and he was starting to find it difficult to breathe through his daily workouts. Still, he continued to discretely flush the flowers down the toilet, and the orderlies remained none the wiser.
That all changed when Hannibal began to cough up leaves and stems, as well as flowers. His coughing fits began attracting attention and, much to his dismay, he ended up coughing up a heliotrope stem with a bundle of flowers attached right as one of the orderlies came to deliver him breakfast. The orderly looked from Hannibal to the wet, bloody flowers. From the flowers back to Hannibal. Perhaps the orderly had a skill for self-preservation, because he slid Hannibal his breakfast and left without saying a word.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hannibal had clearly overestimated the orderly’s self-preservation abilities, because the very next day Alana came to see him in his cell, looking all too smug.
“I heard the most interesting thing yesterday,” Alana began straight away, not bothering with a proper greeting.
Hannibal glared at her sullenly, silent.
“Michael said,” Alana continued, undeterred by Hannibal’s hostility, “that when he came to give you breakfast yesterday, he saw you cough up a bunch of tiny purple flowers. Is there, perhaps, anything you’d like to tell me, Hannibal?”
“No,” Hannibal replied through gritted teeth, annoyed by how scratchy his voice sounded.
“Alright then,” Alana responded cheerily. “I’ll just wait here until you decide to tell me, or until your body does it for you.”
And unfortunately, a mere thirty minutes later, that was exactly what happened.
Though Hannibal tried his best, he couldn’t prevent the coughing fit that overcame him, nor could he prevent the bloody heliotrope stem, leaves, and flowers from exiting his mouth and falling to the floor in an undignified heap.
“That’s what I thought,” Alana said, staring with satisfaction at the bloody bundle on the floor.
To Hannibal’s relief, she exited just a few moments later, leaving him to his thoughts.
As soon as she was gone, Hannibal retreated into his memory palace and recalled everything he had learned about Hanahaki disease at medical school in the hope of making an accurate estimate of how long he had left to live.
The presence of leaves and stems meant that he’d officially progressed to stage 2 of the disease, Hannibal recognized. Given that heliotropes have no thorns, and that he’d taken almost five months to go from stage 1 to stage 2, he came to the conclusion that he likely had about eight months left to live, maybe nine if he was especially stubborn. He could elect to get the surgery, he supposed, but his love for Will would be surgically removed along with the flowers. That, Hannibal realized, was unthinkable. Hannibal had never felt anything even approaching what he feels for Will since…
Since he was a child.
Now that he had it, he wouldn’t dream of doing away with it, even if it killed him in the end. Will was his whole world, he wasn’t sure what of himself would even be left without his love for him. Nothing complete, certainly.
He’d already given up his freedom for Will, why should he balk at giving up his life, too?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hannibal found himself surprised a few days later when Alana came back to his cell with a doctor at her heels, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been. She was legally obligated to provide him with medical care, or at least the option for it. Still, she must have known that he wouldn’t have objected if she’d left him to his own devices.
Hannibal listened on absentmindedly as the doctor explained what he already knew. He understood what his options were, and he’d already made his decision.
“Thank you, but I have no desire to be treated for my condition,” Hannibal stated mildly when the doctor finally finished with his explanation. The doctor looked surprised by that statement. Alana did not.
“Are you… certain?” the doctor asked, somewhat incredulously.
“Yes,” Hannibal replied concisely, before walking over to his desk to continue the sketch he had been working on before this interruption. He thought that Will looked quite beautiful still with angel wings, however much he wished that he’d shed them.
Hannibal didn’t look up from his sketch, even as he heard Alana and the doctor leave a moment later—he had no desire to see the triumph in her eyes, or to allow her to see the defeat in his own.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just a few days after the doctor’s brief visit, Hannibal coughed up another type of flower. He almost didn’t notice the difference at all—the flower was similar in size and shape to the purple heliotropes he had been expelling for months now, and its vibrant sky blue coloring wasn’t conspicuous under all the blood. Hannibal only noticed the difference in color when he went to pick it up and put it in his wastebasket.
Forget-me-not. How quaint. The sky blue petals paired well with the purple heliotrope, at least—he would hate to have aesthetically incongruous flowers growing in his lungs.
Hannibal washed his blood off of the little forget-me-not in the sink and dried it carefully, with the intention of pressing it—a rather difficult feat when nothing particularly hard or heavy was allowed in his possession. Still, Hannibal had successfully managed to press a few heliotrope flowers in the previous weeks by using a small paperback novel, a couple rubber bands, and a lot of perseverance—the same should work for the forget-me-not as well.
He’d been thinking of sending them in one of his letters to Will, though he suspected that all his letters were either shredded or incinerated upon their arrival at Will’s address. Perhaps, if Will was at least opening the letters to shred them or throw them into a fire, he would see the delicate pressed flower and pause.
Hannibal had less than a year to live, and only a couple more months where he could still function somewhat normally. He’d like to see Will once more before he died, ideally before it became difficult to speak. He had so many things to say to Will—too many, truly, for a single visit.
Hannibal supposed he’d just have to prioritize.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was becoming difficult to eat. Hannibal’s throat was constantly raw, scratchy, and sore, causing every meal to turn into a painful and frustrating ordeal. He was beginning to lose weight. His regular exercise routine had become too strenuous, the flowers in his airway causing Hannibal to quickly lose his breath, so he’d had to resort to performing a watered-down version of it.
Alana came to visit him again, watching in silence as Hannibal took nearly an hour to choke down a lunch of dry chicken, salad, and crackers between coughing fits, wincing slightly whenever any of it scraped his throat.
He was only ever served soft foods from that point on.
With the gradual increase in petals, leaves, and stems Hannibal was coughing up each day, he’d taken up a new hobby. The tacky blood and phlegm that come up alongside the flowers allowed the petals to stick to the walls of his cell quite nicely, and it was trivial to clean off the excess from the outward-facing side. So, Hannibal had taken to creating abstract blue-and-purple murals with his ever-increasing supply of petals.
He’d never really been one for abstract art in the past, but there’s a first time for everything, he supposed.
The orderlies took them down quickly at first—Hannibal often couldn’t even finish one of his murals before they came and forced him to stand, cuffed and restrained, while they cleaned his art off of the walls. But within a few weeks—either out of pity or a lack of enthusiasm for cleaning blood and petals off of walls—they stopped bothering to clean them up at all, allowing them to dry and wilt before Hannibal eventually cleaned them up himself (he only had so much space to work with, after all).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About four months after the doctor had visited and Hannibal refused treatment is when Hannibal noticed that he had visibly begun to deteriorate. He’d had to stop his exercise routine entirely—the flora clogging his lungs and airways made it too difficult for him to catch his breath. He’d also lost a lot of weight—even with his soft food diet, eating was still a chore. Plus, everything tasted like flowers, which got old very fast.
He looked pale and sickly, his face gaunt and his eyes shadowed and sunken in.
Hannibal covered every reflective surface in his cell with flower petals.
He could barely speak anymore, each word coming out hoarse and painful. If Will didn’t visit within the next week, Hannibal didn’t think he'd be able to say anything to him at all. He hated the thought of becoming mute again after almost forty years, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
Hannibal still sent letters to Will at least once a week, a pressed flower now included with each one. In these letters he wrote about everything, ranging from existentialist philosophy to the few happy memories from his childhood. He hoped desperately that Will was keeping the letters, even if he left all of them in a box, unread. Because if he was, he was certain that Will would be unable to stop himself from reading all of them upon receiving the news of Hannibal’s death.
Perhaps he should begin writing a letter to Will to be delivered posthumously. Even if Will had disposed of all of Hannibal’s other letters, he would at least read that one, surely?
Alana continued to visit Hannibal occasionally. Rarely saying anything, she simply stared at his weakened form with an inscrutable expression for a few minutes before leaving.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, almost six months after Hannibal refused treatment, ten months after the disease had first taken hold, Will visited him.
He arrived without warning, not that Hannibal could have done much to prepare. He was weak now, essentially mute, and could barely walk the length of his cell without running out of breath. The orderlies weren’t even scared of him anymore, and that stung more than Hannibal had been expecting.
Will looked shocked by the sight of him, though Alana had certainly told him about Hannibal’s state before allowing him to visit.
Since Will was still staring at him, not saying anything, Hannibal decided to walk up to the front of his cell, as close as he could get to him with the plexiglass barrier in the way. He moved very slowly, in an attempt to prevent a coughing fit from taking hold (which was, thankfully, successful). Will continued to stare at him the whole time, his expression slowly moving from shock to something guarded, indecipherable.
Gradually, Will stepped closer to the glass barrier separating him from Hannibal, moving forward until he was close enough to reach a hand out and press his palm against the surface of the glass. Reverently, Hannibal did the same, realizing that this was likely the closest he would ever get to touching Will again before he died. He swore that he could feel the warmth of Will’s body heat through the glass, infrared radiation crossing the barrier that their physical bodies could not.
He took a moment to take Will in, committing every bit of him to memory, hoping fervently that his memories could make it to whatever lies beyond. He still had so much he wanted to say to Will, but when he opened his mouth to speak nothing came out, not even a pained whisper.
Will was the one to break the silence instead, his voice shaking with an indescribable emotion.
“How long?”
With that question, Will could be asking a multitude of things. How long has he had the disease for? How long does he have left to live? For how long has he loved Will?
Hannibal didn’t even attempt to respond, he didn’t think there was any point. Instead, he continued to gaze at Will, cherishing every second he got to spend in his presence.
Will left a few minutes later without another word, his footsteps slowly fading as he walked back through the hall.
Even when his form was no longer visible, his footsteps no longer audible, his scent remained. Musky, with traces of dog and a woman’s perfume, and of course that same terrible aftershave that Hannibal had grown to love in spite of himself.
For the first time since the night he had fallen to his knees in the snow and surrendered, Hannibal cried.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hannibal had expected to die within a week of Will’s visit. That was the only thing he’d been holding out for, really, and his final letter to Will was already drafted and ready to be sent out. Each and every breath he took was agonizing and difficult, especially when he was lying down. Hannibal thought he might suffocate in his sleep.
But for some reason, the disease’s progression had stalled. Hannibal was miserable and in pain and barely holding on, but he was still holding on. What for, Hannibal couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was because of his primal, unquakeable desire to live—the same force that had gotten him through the worst years of his childhood, even when he had absolutely nothing left to live for.
For almost two weeks, Hannibal lived in limbo—barely surviving yet unable to die. He hardly ate, hardly drank—just slept, and wondered. The orderlies had taken to checking in on him every few hours with a body bag in tow, waiting for him to finally keel over.
Still, Hannibal lived.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hannibal’s limbo was finally broken by a second unexpected visit from Will. Except, this time, he arrived at Hannibal's cell panting and coated in blood, a stolen keycard clutched in his hand. The alarms went off a couple seconds later, but by that point Will had already swiped the keycard and punched in a code, and the barrier separating Hannibal from the world was broken.
Hannibal could barely stand, let alone walk, but that ceased to matter when Will picked him up (easily, far too easily—just how much weight has he lost?) and carried him to the nearest emergency exit. No orderlies or security guards came to stop them—in fact the whole building was eerily quiet, excluding the blaring alarm. Will kicked open the emergency exit door with ease and shoved them both into the backseat of a car waiting just outside, which immediately drove off.
In the car, Will pulled Hannibal close to his chest and whispered a phrase that Hannibal thought he would never hear directed at him again, not since she died and he became.
Hannibal felt a full-body shiver go through him, along with a strange sort of relief, and immediately coughed up a garden’s worth of heliotrope and forget-me-not plants, roots included, onto the floor of the car. With his airways cleared Hannibal should have been able to speak, to thank Will and tell him what he surely already knew, but when he opened his mouth, still, no words came out.
Will, who must have noticed Hannibal’s failed attempt at speech, shushed him gently.
“I know Hannibal, I know. You don’t have to say anything, love.”
Will directed Hannibal’s head into the crook of his neck, and wrapped his arms around Hannibal even tighter. Only then, when Hannibal felt his tears seeping into the collar of Will’s shirt, did he realize that he’d been crying. Unable to keep any of his shields up, and not truly wanting to besides, he finally let himself melt into the security of Will’s embrace, and loved.