Archive of Our Own ^beta

Monday.  Today was a Monday.  Last year it had been a Sunday, the year before that a Friday, and the year before that, a Thursday, but this year it was a Monday.  

Hannibal usually cancelled his patients on this day, if he had any.  He hadn’t had any last year, because that year it was on a Sunday.  But he had a handful of patients that he saw on Mondays, all of which he’d cancelled for today, citing sudden respiratory illness.  

All, except for Will.  Talking to Will was a pleasure of the highest order, and Hannibal would be remiss to give up on an opportunity to see him for anything short of his own death—and perhaps not even then, since there was a higher likelihood than ever of Will being the one to take his life.  His beautiful, vengeful, furious Will.  What he wouldn’t give to see that fury fully unbridled, even if it was directed at him…

Hannibal was the master of his own emotions.  He often indulged in them on this day, but he didn’t have to.  He simply chose to, every year, without fail.  But not this year.  Because this year, to do so would mean forsaking the pleasure of Will’s company—practically a crime.  However, not honoring her memory on this day would also be a crime, an inconceivable one, one that he could not bring himself to commit (though he could have, if he had truly wanted to).  

So, he had decided to split his day.  In the morning, he would allow himself to unlock those certain memories, he would give himself most of the day to recall them, to experience them, and then just before evening he would seal them up again and drive to his office for Will’s appointment.  A lesser man may be unable to open and seal off his memories and the emotions they encouraged at will without leaving any residue behind, but Hannibal was not a lesser man.  He was in control.  He was in control, even on this day.  He was in control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He is in control, Hannibal reminds himself as he stares at the safe tucked in the back of a wardrobe in his master bedroom.  He is in control, he will not slip, he will not fall.  Slowly, Hannibal reaches out a single hand to punch in the PIN to the safe (today’s date) and opens the metal hinged door.  Inside the safe, resting on top of a small folder, is an old, worn-down stuffed rabbit.  It was a soft baby pink at one point but its color has since dulled to a rosy-tinged grey.  It has two arms, two short, stubby legs, and two ears.  The ears are different sizes (because he had insisted on cutting them out and sewing them on himself—Reina, his favorite member of the castle staff, had essentially made the rest of the bunny for him with Hannibal watching over her shoulder, but he had insisted on doing the ears himself because it was his birthday present to her, and he had to do part of it himself, even if he had no sewing skills to speak of, because it was for her, and he wanted—) and the eyes are nothing but small black beads, but it is the most valuable item he owns, so he keeps it in the safe.

Hannibal stares at the rabbit in silence, and the rabbit does not stare back because it has flopped onto its side sometime between Hannibal furtively checking the safe two months ago to make sure that it was still there, and now.  Hannibal moves the rabbit back into an upright position so that it can look at him properly, promptly feels pathetic for doing so, and grabs the rabbit out of the safe.  He closes the safe, then the wardrobe, and marches over to the bed, not sparing the rabbit another glance until he sets it on the bed beside himself.

He looks at the rabbit again, and it takes him one, two, three seconds to begin sobbing, burying his face into a pillow and holding the rabbit to his chest like a lifeline.

Vaguely, Hannibal is aware that things are already not going to plan (he was supposed to bring the rabbit downstairs with him and make a late breakfast, not start sobbing in his bed, he had not scheduled time for sobbing in bed), but he can’t really bring himself to care.  At least, not enough to stop.  There are still eight hours until his appointment with Will, if he gets his crying out of the way now there should be no traces of it on his face by the time Will sees him.  Will abhors weakness and vulnerability—Hannibal knows this, has seen it for himself when Will is interviewing victims.  Will does his best to hide it, of course, but some of his discomfort—discomfort that must be a result of disgust—still shows through to Hannibal.

His face still buried in the pillow, Hannibal can feel his tears seeping into the pillowcase at an alarming rate.  He’d normally allow himself to slip into the comfort of regression at this point, but it sometimes took him a whole day to come back from it, and he was to see Will in eight hours.  Will, who was already planning to betray him.  It would take the captivating monstrosity of the Ripper to make Will turn on Jack, to seduce him into a life by Hannibal’s side—certainly not the crying of a child who really should have died decades ago, alongside his sister.  So Hannibal would maintain his maturity, even though it hurt, for the sake of his future with Will.

Eventually, once his tears have ceased and his breathing is even once again, Hannibal forces himself to get up and go downstairs to make himself breakfast, even though he’s not hungry.  Light pours in from the kitchen windows as he resolutely makes omelets over the stove (vegetarian, for once, because he can never stand the taste and texture of meat on this day).  

Through the windows, he can see that it is a clear, sunny day.  There is no snow (last year, it had snowed the whole day through, and so Hannibal had spent most of the day curled up under a mountain of blankets and pillows in his other bedroom, scared, miserable, and holding onto her rabbit like it would disappear if he let go of it, like he had let go of her despite his best efforts to hold on, and he had never seen her alive again—), but this fact does little to make Hannibal feel better.  It just serves to make him feel a bit neurotic when he inevitably heads over to the kitchen thermostat and turns it up a few degrees.

Hannibal eats his omelet in silence, with the rabbit sat beside him.  The rabbit refused to touch its omelet, so Hannibal eats it for him, despite the fact that he didn’t have the appetite to enjoy one portion of breakfast, let alone two.  

With breakfast taken care of, Hannibal moves into the foyer where he keeps his harpsichord.  Stopping in front of the instrument, he closes his eyes and deliberately unlocks a portion of the memories that he keeps sealed away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mischa had not been a huge fan of the harpsichord.  It sounded too metallic, she had told Hannibal when he had questioned her on it.  She much preferred the softer sound of the piano, so that is what Hannibal would usually play for her when she requested a song.  

Hannibal does not have a piano at his home—playing the piano sounds too much like memories, like fireflies and bell-laughs and innocence.

There was one song that she liked on the harpsichord, though, a traditional children’s song that was playful and boisterous, qualities that were smothered under the softness of the piano.  Hannibal plays that song now, and he can almost feel her sitting beside him in her yellow summer dress, rosy-cheeked and barefoot—always barefoot—and absolutely adoring of her big brother.

The song goes by too quickly for Hannibal’s liking, so he plays it again, and again.  The stuffed rabbit listens on intently from its place next to Hannibal on the bench.

After one more rendition of the song, Hannibal finally lifts his fingers from the keys and turns away from the instrument.  He lifts the rabbit off the bench and carries it to his study, where he takes out his best pencils and prepares to sketch.

Few pictures of her had survived, and most of the ones that did were baby photos.  But Hannibal remembered her clearly, and he sketched her every year to cement her image in his psyche.  Each year he chose a different memory of her to sketch, to bring back to life on paper.  Hannibal kept these sketches in the safe, in a folder at the bottom—Mischa catching fireflies with her hands, Mischa sitting beside Hannibal as he played the piano, Mischa covered in mud after chasing a frog along the riverbank, Mischa asleep in the garden wearing a rumpled sundress, Mischa’s joy and excitement when Hannibal gifted her a homemade stuffed rabbit for her third birthday (she’d immediately proceeded to name it Triušis, which was not particularly creative, but Hannibal forgave her for that instantly).

Hannibal is running out of memories.  But he still has a few left, and today he decides to sketch Mischa in her bedroom, hugging her beloved plush rabbit against her chest as she waits for Hannibal to begin reading her a bedtime story.

Hannibal spends hours at his desk sketching, almost in a trance, painstakingly perfecting every last detail—it has to be flawless before he can declare it finished and bring it to rest with the others.  He only gets up once, to use the bathroom and drink some water, and he returns to his project immediately after.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time Hannibal finally declares his drawing to be finished, it is late into the afternoon and he only has a couple hours left until he has to leave for Will’s appointment.  He briefly returns to his bedroom to place his latest sketch with the others, and he spends a few minutes looking through the collection of memories before closing off the safe once again.  

He only ever draws the good memories—he wants to remember her happy and content, not afraid and hungry, and he certainly doesn’t want to remember her as a mutilated corpse, as a watery broth, as the collection of baby teeth that sat under her headstone instead of a body (because there hadn’t been anything else left of her to bury, not by the time the men were done with her, and Hannibal had eaten those meals too, even after he knew, because he wanted to keep as much of her as he could, and the more he ate, the less of her the men would get to have in their bodies).

He only ever draws the good memories.

Hannibal feels himself come dangerously close to crying again, but he can’t, not so soon before he sees Will.  In an attempt to keep the tears at bay, Hannibal goes back to the kitchen to make himself something to eat—something small to tide him over until he returns.  The rabbit comes with him, of course, and Hannibal sets it on the counter before getting out a cutting board and knife.  He takes an apple out of the fruit basket and begins slicing it up with careful, even chops.

Apples had been Mischa’s favorite fruit.  She’d loved them plain, dipped in honey, baked into a dessert—any way one could conceivably eat an apple.  It’s why apple tarts were the first thing Hannibal had ever learned how to bake.  She had even come up with a song about how much she liked them.  Hannibal remembers the general tune of it, but not the words.  Why can’t he remember the words?  

He remembers remembering them when he was staying with his uncle Robertus, mouthing the song silently as he worked on making the perfect apple pie—one a bit too sweet for his tastes, but that she would have loved.  She’d never gotten to see Hannibal’s baking skills progress past mediocre apple tarts, never got to taste the apple pie that Hannibal had finally perfected after hundreds of attempts, made specifically to appease her palette.

Hannibal only realizes that he’s started crying when a teardrop lands on his hand from above, startling him out of his reverie.

He cannot cry, Hannibal reminds himself, because if he does, when Will arrives for his appointment he will look like he had been crying, and then Will will see that vulnerability and pounce on it, and the allure of the Chesapeake Ripper will be shattered, and Will will go through with his plan to double-cross Hannibal and turn him in to Jack, and Hannibal will have to go on the run and be alone again, and why can’t he remember the words?

Hannibal loses his grip on the knife and it falls onto the cutting board beside the half-sliced apple, but he barely notices because he can’t see through the tears, and he feels like he’s on fire but he’s shivering too much to be truly warm, and why can’t he remember the words?

Hannibal falls to his knees in front of the kitchen counter, and he tries as hard as he can, but he can’t stop the tears.  He can’t even stop the sobs—he can hear them echoing through the kitchen, an audible display of his failure to keep his vulnerability contained.  He can’t see Will like this.

Hannibal brings his knees up to his chest and curls himself into a ball.  He can feel himself quickly slipping into regression, and he should probably at least try to fight it, but he’s just too tired.  He feels so alone—he wants a friend, he wants his sister back, but he’s never going to see her again, and that’s just too much to bear.

He needs something, anything, to lessen the ache and the emptiness, so he grabs Triušis off the counter and flees to his room—the room that’s soft, and cozy, and made for a child.  He curls up in the bed, buried within a mountain of blankets and cuddling his rabbit, and it’s almost enough to keep away the chill.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hannibal is half-asleep, fuzzy-headed and very little, when he hears someone calling his name from a few rooms away.  It takes him a second to recognize the voice as Will’s, and a few more to remember why Will looking for him is not good (because he wants to see Will, he really does, but if Will sees him like this he might never want to see Hannibal again).

Clumsily, Hannibal climbs out of his blanket pile and hides in the only place he can think of—under the bed.  He has to crawl on his belly to fit there, and he bumps his shoulder against the bedframe halfway through, but there’s no way Will will find him and Triušis down here!

Hannibal hears the door to the room creak open, and he watches Will’s feet as they step into the room, move forward a few paces, and stop next to the bed.

“Hannibal?” Will calls out again, and his voice sounds so soft and comforting, and Hannibal wants to beg Will to please come to him, to hold him and not let go, but Will isn’t supposed to see him like this.

“Go away,” Hannibal tells him halfheartedly, but Will doesn’t go away.

Instead, he gets down on the floor so that he can see under the bed.  He makes eye contact with Hannibal, and Hannibal panics.  Will is going to find out that right now Hannibal is small, and vulnerable, and not scary, and then Will won’t want him anymore, and Hannibal will be alone again for forever.

“Go away,” Hannibal tells him once more, but instead of going away Will reaches out his arm to Hannibal.  After a moment of indecision, Hannibal grabs onto Will’s wrist.  He knows he shouldn’t, but he wants the warmth and the comfort too much to resist.

“Hannibal, can you come out from under the bed please?”  Will asks him, and Hannibal wants to listen, but coming out means letting Will see him, and he’s not supposed to do that.

“Please go away, I don’t want you to leave,” Hannibal begs.  Because that’s what will happen when Will realizes what Hannibal is right now.  He will leave, and he won’t come back, and that would hurt too much to bear.

“Hannibal, how can I go away but not leave?” Will questions, confused.

“Not now, later,” Hannibal explains, and maybe he should let go of Will so that Will can leave like he’s supposed to, but he just can’t bring himself to.

“Do you want me to go away now, so I won’t leave later?” Will asks, and Hannibal nods his head in agreement.

“Please come out, I promise I won’t leave—now or later,” Will tells Hannibal with eyes full of sincerity, and Hannibal believes him.  Will wouldn’t break a promise, would he?

Hannibal crawls out from under the bed, into the light of the room, and lets himself be seen.  Will gives him a soft smile and it makes him feel warm and melty all over, like sunlight on snow.

Will’s gaze shifts from Hannibal to the rabbit still held in his hand.  “Watchya got there, honey?” he asks, sounding curious.

Hannibal turns his head to look at Triušis, who he had almost forgotten about with the excitement of Will’s appearance.  Triušis, the last thing he has left of his little sister.  Suddenly, Hannibal is transported into a memory of the last time he had seen her alive.

Hannibal had clutched Mischa in his arms, held her frail body against his chest, while the hungry men had tried to rip her away from him.  He fought to keep her with all his might, but he was small, and weak from starvation, and it only took a few moments for the men to succeed and carry her away.

“Myliu tave, Hannibal!” she had cried out as they took her, like she’d known they would never see each other again—not alive, at least.  

It had all happened so fast, and Hannibal had been so concentrated on gripping on to her—on trying to fight back even though he knew it was futile, that the words barely registered through the chaos.  All his focus had been on trying to keep her with him, and her focus had been on—

“Myliu tave, Hannibal!”

He hadn’t even been able to respond in kind before she was out of sight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hannibal isn’t exactly sure how it happens, but he returns to the present with Will holding him tightly, his head pressed against Will’s chest, so close that he can hear Will’s heart beating.  It’s steady, soothing, and Hannibal wants to stay like this forever.

Will is asking him a question, Hannibal realizes.  The tone of it registers but not the words.  Hannibal nods into Will’s shirt anyway, willing to agree to just about anything Will asks so long as he stays.  He curls impossibly closer into Will, wishing he was smaller in size so that Will could envelop him completely, leaving no piece of himself exposed.

A few minutes pass in this manner before Will suddenly stands up, bringing Hannibal along with him.  Hannibal lets out a soft whine, worried that Will is trying to leave, but Will simply hauls them both up onto the bed, his hold on Hannibal never faltering.

Although the bed is a lot cozier and more comfortable than lying on the floor, Hannibal can’t help but feel more exposed.  That is, until Will wraps a blanket around the both of them, securing them against each other and locking in their warmth.  Hannibal feels the beginnings of drowsiness threatening to overcome him, but he doesn’t want to fall asleep and wake up alone.

“Will?” Hannibal says timidly, not wanting to irritate him but also needing reassurance too much to stay quiet.

“Yes, Hannibal?” Will asks encouragingly.

“Will you stay?”

“Of course, I’ll stay for as long as you want me to,” Will tells him.

Will is going to stay.  Will won’t leave him.  Will is going to keep Hannibal in his warm embrace, and Hannibal won’t be cold, or alone, anymore.  Hannibal starts tearing up again, sniffling into Will’s shirt while Will holds him even tighter and starts to rock him gently, slowly soothing Hannibal into sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Hannibal wakes up, he is lying on the bed next to Will with Triušis between them, pressed tight against his chest.  He feels a small pang of hunger in his belly, a sensation which brings back terrible memories, a sensation that he hates because it makes him afraid.  Will looks to be asleep, with his eyes closed and his breathing slow and even.  Hannibal pokes him in the chest to wake him up.

“Yes, Hannibal?” Will questions groggily, though he doesn’t seem too annoyed about being woken up.

“Hungry,” Hannibal tells him.  Will can fix that, Hannibal knows.  Will can take care of him.

“Do you want to go down to the kitchen with me to find something to eat?” Will asks.

Hannibal hums affirmatively in response, untangling himself from the blanket Will had wrapped him in before grabbing ahold of Triušis with one hand, Will with the other, and leading them both to the kitchen.  Hannibal almost expects Will to wrench himself away from Hannibal’s hold, to tell Hannibal that it was too much for him, that he was too much for him (Hannibal’s grip on Will’s hand tightens at the thought), but Will follows him all the way to the kitchen without complaint.

Will begins puttering around the kitchen, looking for ingredients to use for making dinner, and Hannibal watches on intently from the kitchen counter.  The apple he had been slicing earlier is still perched on a cutting board, browned from oxidation but still good to eat.  Hannibal nibbles on it to stave off the feeling of hunger while Will works on preparing dinner.

After searching all around the kitchen for ingredients, Will begins fiddling with the stovetop.  He has yet to figure out that the dials must be pressed down when turned to work properly, and Hannibal finds his clear confusion and mild frustration to be incredibly amusing.  Before he can stop himself he’s giggling softly, his hunger and fears entirely forgotten for the moment.  Just as Will starts to turn around, trying to catch Hannibal in the act, Hannibal quickly schools his features and resumes crunching on his apple slices.  It wouldn’t do for Will to think that Hannibal was laughing at his cooking attempts, after all (even if he was).

Will stares at Hannibal with suspicion for a second before turning back to the stove, and this time he finally figures out the dials.  

Hannibal watches attentively as Will continues making dinner for them both.  He’s making some sort of pasta and tomato dish, though he’s using Hannibal’s specialty squid ink pasta to do it for some reason—he must not know that squid ink pasta pairs best with oil-based sauces.  

Watching Will cook for him soothes something deep inside Hannibal.  The ravenous beast, always starving, is briefly sated.  He feels cared for, in a way that he hasn’t experienced since before his parents' deaths.  Hannibal continues watching Will, enraptured, while he consumes the last of his apple slices.  With no food left to nibble on, Hannibal lifts Triušis up to his chest and brings the rabbit’s ear to his mouth, sucking on it softly.

Soon, too soon, Will finishes setting up dinner on the stovetop, turning back to Hannibal immediately afterwards.  Hannibal, unprepared for Will’s sudden scrutiny, is still mouthing on the longer of his plush rabbit’s bunny ears.  He blushes with the intensity of Will’s gaze—he knows he’s not supposed to chew on Triušis, his mother had scolded Mischa for doing the same back in the hazy past.  He removes the plush ear from his mouth, furtively glancing up at Will to see if he’s mad.  Will is staring at him, intensely so, but he doesn’t seem angry.  Hannibal hopes he isn’t angry.

“Would you like to help me set the table, sweetheart?”  Will asks with honeyed affection.

Hannibal’s heart leaps at the endearment, and he nods eagerly.  He leaves Triušis on the counter for the moment and walks over to the dinnerware.  He’s so good at setting the table—Will’s going to be impressed!

Will grabs the plates from the cabinet before Hannibal can do the same, so he opts for the silverware instead: two forks (the correct forks, not the salad forks or dessert forks), two spoons, and two knives.  He brings them over to the table and places them beside the plates with great care, making sure that they are in the correct order and perfectly aligned with the plate and table.  Once satisfied, he looks over to Will to make sure that he’s satisfied with Hannibal’s work too.

Will smiles at him warmly.  “Great job, Hannibal!”  he exclaims, exactly the way Hannibal had been hoping for.  Hannibal beams back at him, his features warmed by the praise.

Will turns back to the stovetop after a moment, turning off the stove and draining the pasta over the adjacent kitchen sink.  Hannibal watches on as Will takes the plates and puts a generous portion of pasta and sauce onto them both.  Carefully, Will places Hannibal’s portion in front of him before doing the same for his own across the table.

Hannibal stares down at the plate of food in front of him.  Will made this for him.  With reverence, Hannibal lifts a bite up to his mouth and consumes it.  It’s perfect.  It doesn’t matter that the pasta is slightly overcooked, or that there is a lack of seasoning.  Will made this for him, so it is perfect.  Hannibal eats his meal diligently, savoring each bite and being sure to completely clean his plate, not wanting any of Will’s efforts to go to waste.

When Hannibal is finally finished, he looks up from his plate to find Will gazing at him with a mixture of amusement and affection.  He stays in place as Will wets a napkin with water from the sink and crouches down in front of Hannibal.

“Can I wipe off your face, honey?”  Will asks him softly.

Hannibal nods, suddenly aware of the sticky feeling of sauce around his mouth and feeling embarrassed about allowing it to get there in the first place.  That embarrassment vanishes the second Will begins tenderly wiping the sauce from his face, replaced with a warm fuzziness at being taken care of.

While Will is cleaning the last traces of sauce from his face, Hannibal’s gaze falls upon Triušis, still sitting on the kitchen counter, and he has a sudden desire to hold the rabbit.  Triušis must be lonely, sitting all by himself where Hannibal had left him.  So, the second Will finishes cleaning Hannibal up, Hannibal rushes over to the counter and grabs him, holding him tightly by the arm.

Will joins Hannibal by the counter a few moments later, and Hannibal takes this as an opportunity to ask him, “Do you want to draw with me and Triušis?”

Drawing was fun, and it could take a long time, so Will wouldn’t get bored and decide to leave.  Hannibal knows he promised he’d stay, but just in case, now he’d have another reason to!

“Is that the name of your rabbit?” Will asks him softly, after a moment of hesitation.

Hannibal looks down as he responds.  “Not mine, Mischa’s,” he states, because it’s true.  He made Triušis, sure, but he’d made him for Mischa.  He was Mischa’s, he would always be Mischa’s.  Hannibal was just taking care of him for her, because she wasn’t there to do it herself.  She’d loved him so much—she’d have wanted him to be taken care of…

“Well, I’d love to draw with you both,” Will replies, pulling Hannibal out of his thoughts.

In response, Hannibal grabs Will’s hand and leads him back up to his room, heading straight to the desk in the corner that houses all his coloring supplies.  He grabs his sketchbook and all his favorite colored pencils off the desk (Will can have the others).  Generously, he rips a page out of his sketchbook and offers it up to Will.  Will, of course, takes it with a smile.

Hannibal lays down on his belly with his coloring supplies and sketchbook and looks imploringly up at Will from his position on the floor.  Will sighs softly, but he sits down next to Hannibal and proceeds to stare intently at the page, perhaps deciding on what to draw.

Hannibal thinks for a moment about what to draw himself, and remembers the first time Mischa saw fireflies.  They’d gone out of the castle, to the stone wall surrounding it, just to look at them.  Mischa, who had only just started talking, had been absolutely delighted.  “Gana lengvas!” she had exclaimed, her Lithuanian just barely understandable.

There had been hundreds of them, glowing in flashes all around the wall and into the forest behind it.  Hannibal recalled it so vividly in that moment—he could almost taste the cool night air, could almost feel Mischa’s tiny, chubby hand in his own.  

The memories of her always felt closer when he was small.

Decided, Hannibal began drawing the view that night, of the fireflies and the wall.  He quickly loses himself in the drawing, the fireflies appearing to flash before him as he carefully draws in each one, the darkened trees behind them swaying slightly with the breeze.

When Hannibal is finished, he grabs Triušis from the floor and holds him over the drawing for a moment, so he can look at it.  The rabbit doesn’t say anything, but Hannibal thinks he approves.

The sound of rustling paper reminds Hannibal of Will’s presence.  He quickly scoots over to Will to look over his shoulder, curious about what he has drawn.

Sadly, Will notices him before he can get a good look at the picture.  “Are you done with your drawing?” he asks Hannibal.

Hannibal nods affirmatively, his eyelids feeling heavy as he scoots even closer to Will.

“Would you like to show me, then?” Will asks him, which isn’t fair because Hannibal came over to him, so he should get to see Will’s drawing first.

“You first,” Hannibal demands, his head falling onto Will’s shoulder—not because he is tired, but rather to get a better view.

“Alright,” Will acquiesces easily.  Hannibal can feel the vibrations of his voice from where his head is tucked beside Will’s neck.  It’s… nice.

Will finally (finally!) lets Hannibal see his drawing.  Hannibal is pretty sure that it’s supposed to be a dog, his thoughts confirmed when Will says, “This is Buster, one of my dogs.  Do you remember him?”

“Yes,” Hannibal replies, an image of Will sitting at his front porch with a little black-and-white terrier in his lap suddenly flashing through his mind.  He supposes that the dog-like creature in Will’s drawing does bear some resemblance, though…

“I don’t remember his ears being that big,” Hannibal remarks thoughtfully.

“Thanks, Hannibal,” Will replies.

“You’re welcome!” Hannibal responds, not sure what Will is thanking him for, but happy to accept the gratitude nonetheless.

Will smiles at him affectionately before asking, “Can I see yours now?”

Hannibal, suddenly eager to show off his drawing skills, grabs his drawing off of the floor and presents it to Will happily.

Will stares intently at the drawing for a while, probably taking the time to fully appreciate its artistic beauty.

“Where is this?” he asks after a while, still gazing at the picture.

Hannibal means to tell Will that it’s just outside of his family’s castle, tucked into the wooded countryside of Lithuania, where he and his sister lived and played before everything became terrible, but what comes out is a single word.  

“Home.”

“Mischa liked the fireflies,” he adds on, his mind overtaken by a memory of her holding out her hand, and watching in awe as a firefly landed on her outstretched palm, flashing cheerfully in the dark night.

Hannibal’s gaze shifts down to Triušis almost subconsciously, the rabbit still held in his left hand.  Just weeks after that lovely moment the men had come, and his parents had been killed, and the cold set in and it started to snow…

Hannibal can feel Will holding him close, his arms wrapping tightly around Hannibal and pulling him out of the memory.  Hannibal suddenly feels very drowsy, his head falling into the crook of Will’s shoulder because it just feels so heavy to hold up.  He lets himself go limp, trusting Will to hold him up and prevent him from crumpling onto the floor.

“Sweetheart, are you tired?” Will asks him softly, his voice nearly a whisper against Hannibal’s ear, causing Hannibal to shiver imperceptibly.

“No, not tired,” Hannibal stubbornly denies, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  What if he falls asleep, and when he wakes up Will is gone?  Just the thought of it causes him pain.  How could he feel happy or safe without Will there to care for him?  He needs to stay awake so, if Will tries to leave, he can change his mind.  Or, failing that, grab on to him and refuse to let go.

“Are you sure?” Will questions him doubtfully.  “Because you seem pretty tired to me.”

“ ‘m sure,” Hannibal says into Will’s shoulder, trying his hardest to keep his traitorous eyelids open.

Will sighs.  “How about this?  You get ready for bed, change into pajamas and use the bathroom, and if you’re still not tired after that we can read a story.”

“Okay,” Hannibal agrees, mostly because he’ll definitely fall asleep if he stays here like this.

“Great!” Will exclaims.  “Do you know where your pajamas are?”

Hannibal nods, reluctantly extricating himself from the warmth of Will’s embrace to walk the few paces to the drawer where he keeps his pajamas.  He hasn’t gotten much use out of them, usually either too distressed or too tired to put them on before going to sleep.  They’re dark blue, dotted with white stars, and very soft.

Hannibal takes the pajamas out of the drawer and walks back to Will with them clutched in his hand.

Will smiles at him encouragingly.  “Come on, let’s get you to the bathroom to change and brush your teeth.”  He then looks at Hannibal expectantly, so Hannibal leads them both to the nearest bathroom a few doors down.

Hannibal knows what’s coming, but still he feels a bolt of apprehension when Will tells him, “I need to get ready too, but I’ll meet you back at the room, okay?”

Hannibal doesn’t want Will to leave, even for a second, but he recognizes (begrudgingly) that Will can’t exactly follow him into the bathroom, so he nods minutely and enters the bathroom without a word.

Hannibal closes the door behind himself, and listens to Will’s footsteps receding down the hall for a few moments before getting on with the task at hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It only takes a few minutes for Hannibal to use the bathroom, brush his teeth, and change into pajamas, so when he walks back to his room he finds that Will has yet to arrive.  He pushes down the anxiety that threatens to encompass him—Will is going to be back in just a couple minutes, he’s just getting ready for bed.  He promised he’d stay—he promised!

To distract himself for a moment, Hannibal walks across the room to the bookshelf along the back wall.  There are only a few books on it (Hannibal tried not to think about this room when he wasn’t… using it, and as such most of the room’s items and furnishings had come from a single, reluctant shopping spree years ago).  The books are: a collection of Aesop’s fables, a translation of The Iliad, a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and The Velveteen Rabbit.  The Iliad is out immediately because the translation is in Italian, and Will can’t read Italian.  Aesop’s fables are too short and too many for Hannibal’s liking—so many stopping points, opportunities for Will to cut their time reading short.  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has the opposite problem—it is too long, Will might decide to stop in the middle of it.  The Velveteen Rabbit, though, is a good length—not too short but not very long either—and it has pretty illustrations on each page that he can look at while Will is reading.

Decided, Hannibal removes The Velveteen Rabbit from the shelf and takes it to the bed with him, picking up Triušis from where he had left him on the floor on his way there.  On the bed, he holds the rabbit anxiously on his lap and waits for Will to come back to him.

Fortunately, Hannibal is only left waiting for a couple minutes before Will enters the room and joins him on the bed.  Hannibal curls into him immediately, handing Will the book and looking up at him hopefully, still not quite certain that he’s really here to stay.

But Will obediently takes the book and opens it, beginning to read aloud a few seconds later.

Hannibal is so caught up in the relief and comfort of having Will next to him that he misses the first few pages of the story entirely.  His mind is consumed by the timbre of Will’s voice, the warmth of his shoulder on Hannibal’s cheek.

Soon, though, the words and their meaning become distinct and understandable.

“...‘When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’”

“...‘Does it hurt?’ Asked the Rabbit.”

“...‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’”

Hannibal is certain that Triušis is Real.  Though Mischa had not had Triušis for very long, she had loved him very much.  And Hannibal had never stopped loving either of them, even as memories of her grew faded and her rabbit became old and worn.

“... ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’”

“... ‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse.  ‘You become.’ …”

Hannibal feels his eyelids growing heavy once again, but this time he lets them close.  He holds Triušis close to his chest, feeling the soft texture of his ears where they graze against the hollow of his neck.  Will continues to read, but the words soon become lost to the hazy fog of Hannibal’s mind.

Eventually, the words stop entirely, replaced with the single click of a lamp turning off.  Hannibal registers Will gently maneuvering him under the covers, and coming to rest beside him.  With the last of his energy, Hannibal reaches over to grab a fistful of Will’s nightshirt, to keep him from moving away in the night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The men are grabbing and pulling, trying to wrench her away from his grip.  He holds on as tightly as he can, but he is weak from starvation, weak from the constant chill.  So is she, but she does her very best to stay with him, to stop the men from taking her away.  Hannibal yells desperately at them, begging them not to take her from him, but they don’t acknowledge a word he says and the men quickly succeed in separating the two of them.  He hears Mischa saying that she loves him, but he is paralyzed, unable to move, unable to speak.  Mischa screams as they drag her out of the room until, suddenly, she is silent.

Hannibal is falling to his knees in the snow, in front of the stool pit.  Sobbing uncontrollably, because there are no words to express the magnitude of his horror, his anguish.  Suddenly, he feels one of the men grab his shoulder, and an immeasurable degree of terror overwhelms him.  Instinctively, he screams, though he knows that there is no one here to help him.  He can feel himself lose control of his bladder in his terror, though the feeling barely registers in comparison to his overwhelming emotion.

Suddenly, Hannibal’s eyelids fly open, and he is no longer in the snow, but in the dark.  In the dark, but he can make out a presence next to him—one of the men?  Hannibal scrambles away from the figure as fast as he can, though he is impeded momentarily by the sheets wrapped around his legs.  He only makes it a couple feet before he finds himself at a wall, a corner.  All out of options and just wanting this to be over, for everything to be over, for him to be anywhere else—Hannibal curls up into a ball in the corner, trying to make himself as small as possible in a desperate attempt at hiding.

Though there is no snow here, Hannibal feels impossibly cold in the dark room—cold, and wet.  That uncomfortable feeling only serves to make him cry harder than he already had been, watching the figure next to him fearfully with blurry eyes.

After a minute, Hannibal becomes aware that the figure is holding something out to him—Triušis.  Tentatively, Hannibal reaches out and grasps onto one of the rabbit’s arms, certain that the stuffed animal is about to be yanked cruelly out of his grip.

But that doesn’t happen.  In fact, Hannibal notices, the figure doesn’t smell like the men—or like a stranger.  He smells… familiar.  Comforting.

Two images come into Hannibal’s mind at that moment—one of a middle-aged man with sandy-blonde hair and a tired smile, and one of a slightly younger man with dark curls and piercing blue eyes.  In that moment, both images are tied to the same title.

“Tėtis?”  Hannibal asks, hopefully.  If Tėtis is here… then he can be safe.

Tėtis starts to say something to him, his voice gentle and soothing.  Hannibal can’t quite understand the words, but that doesn’t matter.  Tėtis is here, next to him, offering him his bunny.

Hannibal launches himself at Tėtis, wrapping himself around him.  Tėtis returns his embrace, continuing to murmur to Hannibal softly while he cries into his shoulder.  One of Tėtis’s hands moves to Hannibal’s hair and runs through it tenderly, sending sparks down Hannibal’s spine and causing him to shudder into the touch.  Tėtis continues stroking Hannibal’s hair and wraps his other arm around Hannibal even tighter, and Hannibal feels… he doesn’t know what he feels.  It’s not something he’s felt for a very long time, if ever at all.  But it doesn’t feel bad.  It feels warm, and heavy, and soft, and he doesn’t want it to ever go away.

Hannibal is still crying, even though he’s not scared anymore.  He just can’t seem to stop, not while Tėtis continues to hold him through it all and makes him feel so… something.

Eventually, though, Hannibal’s tears cease.  For a few moments there is nothing but the sound of their combined breathing.  Then, Tėtis moves one of his arms to turn the lamp on and asks Hannibal something—Hannibal isn’t sure what, the words refuse to solidify in his mind.  He looks at Tėtis for a hint.

But Tėtis starts trying to move away from him—did Hannibal do something wrong?  Hannibal whines in distress and holds onto him even harder—he won’t let Tėtis leave him, he won’t!

To Hannibal’s relief, Tėtis stops trying to move away for the moment, though he does take hold of Hannibal’s arm wrapped around him, lifting it away gently.  Slowly, Tėtis disentangles the two of them, but he never lets go of Hannibal’s hand, nor does he try to separate him from Triušis, who Hannibal is still gripping onto tightly.  Eventually, he maneuvers Hannibal to the edge of the bed with him, and helps Hannibal to stand up on unsteady feet.  It is only at this point that Hannibal fully registers the wetness soaking the front of his pants, the chill of the cooling liquid causing him to shiver.

Tėtis begins leading Hannibal through the dark hallway, and Hannibal doesn’t like the long corridors or the shadows, but he trusts Tėtis to keep him safe.  It isn’t long before they reach the bathroom, the sudden influx of cool light hurting Hannibal’s eyes when Tėtis flips on the lightswitch. 

Tėtis gently guides Hannibal into sitting on the closed toilet seat while he turns on the bath and lets it fill up with warm water.  Watching this, Hannibal realizes that he’s been bad—even if he hadn’t meant to be.  He got himself dirty, got the bed dirty, got Tėtis dirty, and now Tėtis has to clean it all up.  Ashamed, Hannibal puts Triušis down on the counter, away from him—he doesn’t want Triušis to get dirty, too.

When the bath has been filled with warm water, Tėtis returns to Hannibal and begins to undress him slowly.  Hannibal, determined to do his best to be good, cooperates to the best of his ability—he still feels a bit shaky and clumsy, like his limbs are refusing to listen to him.

Once Tėtis has successfully removed all of Hannibal’s clothing, he guides him into the bath carefully.  The water is warm without being painfully hot, and after a moment Hannibal finally stops shivering.  Tėtis smiles up at Hannibal, and says something to him—Hannibal can pick out a few of the words this time, with some effort.  He hears “go,” “be back,” “baby,” and “promise,” though the full sentence is lost on him.

Hannibal frowns.  He doesn’t want Tėtis to leave him, even if he promises to be back.

Tėtis leans towards Hannibal and strokes his hair slowly, comfortingly.  Hannibal looks up at him with a pleading expression, hoping that Tėtis will change his mind and stay with him, but after a moment Tėtis turns around and leaves, closing the bathroom door slowly behind him.

Alone in the bathroom, Hannibal thinks about how to make up for the fact that he’s been bad.  He knows that he hasn’t just been bad tonight, either—Tėtis was already mad at him from before, when he had… when he had gotten him in trouble and locked up in the hospital.  Even though Hannibal had gotten him back out when he had started missing him too much, Tėtis—Will—had still been mad.  And he’d also let Will be sick, saying that he didn’t know what was wrong even when he did.  And he’d directed Will into going after Tobias, where he had gotten hurt.  And he had lied about Abigail.  And—

Why was Will staying with him at all, when Hannibal has been so bad?

Maybe Will isn’t going to come back, after all.  Hannibal can’t stop him from leaving, not while he’s like this.  Maybe Will is walking out the front door right now, and Hannibal will never get to see him again.

Hannibal curls in on himself in the bathtub, distressed by the thought of Will abandoning him.  He would do anything to avoid that outcome, even apologize.  Hannibal isn’t usually sorry about anything, but he thinks he’s sorry now.  He could be sorry, if it got Will to come back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time Will finally returns to the bathroom, Hannibal has worked himself into a panic.  The second he notices Will’s presence he begins apologizing over and over, his voice shaky and slurred.

Will immediately comes over to the bath, crouching in front of Hannibal.  “You have nothing to be sorry for, honey,” Will reassures him.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Hannibal shakes his head vigorously.  That isn’t true—Will has been angry at him ever since he got out of the hospital. If Hannibal hadn’t done anything wrong, then Will wouldn’t have been angry all that time.

“I’m bad,” Hannibal tells Will desperately.  Maybe if he’s sorry enough Will could forgive him, and stay.  “I hurt you,” Hannibal continues, even as his voice breaks with an influx of tears.  “I got you in trouble.”

Hannibal looks down into the bathwater, miserable.  He startles minutely when he feels a washcloth patting his face, removing the tear tracks from his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Hannibal repeats one last time.  “I didn’t know what to do,” he adds in a whisper.  He really hadn’t known what to do.  He’d never wanted anyone so much since Mischa, he wasn’t prepared to handle all the emotions it brought out in him.

“I forgive you,” Will tells him simply.

At that comment, Hannibal looks up in disbelief.  He can’t believe Will would forgive him, just like that.  But he has.

He has, and Hannibal doesn’t know what to do with that.  Will is amazing, and Hannibal loves him so much he feels like he’s going to burst.  Tears start pooling below his eyes as a result of his overwhelm, and Will wipes them away gently with the washcloth.

When Hannibal calms, Will moves to washing his tummy and his thighs where Hannibal had wet himself.  Hannibal lets his eyes fall closed for a second while Will works, feeling very sleepy and ready to go back to bed.

When Will is done he helps Hannibal out of the bathtub, immediately wrapping a fluffy towel around him to stave off the cold.

“Can you dress yourself, sweetheart?” he asks Hannibal.

Hannibal thinks for a moment before nodding.  He still feels a little unsteady and clumsy, but he doesn't want to make Will dress him, like a baby—he’s not a baby.  In response, Will hands Hannibal a set of pajamas, ruffling Hannibal’s hair with a towel before going back to the bath to drain it.

Hannibal gets dressed slowly and with difficulty, frustrating himself slightly in the process.  He has to sit on the toilet seat to get his feet through his underwear and pants, and when he attempts to put his shirt on he can’t find the sleeves to put his arms through.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Hannibal hears Will say from next to him, though he can’t see him through the shirt.  Will holds up the sleeves of the shirt and guides Hannibal’s hands through them with care.

Once Hannibal’s shirt is on properly Will asks him, “Are you ready to go back to bed?”

Hannibal nods in response, grabbing Triušis from the bathroom counter and cuddling him tightly for a moment now that he’s clean.  Then he takes Will’s hand and leads him back to the bedroom, part of him still worried that Will will leave if Hannibal breaks contact.

But Will dutifully follows Hannibal all the way into bed, where Hannibal clings onto him tightly.  Will returns the embrace, stroking Hannibal’s back soothingly.

Hannibal feels himself about to drift off, but he doesn’t want to fall asleep and miss any of this moment.  He wants Will to stay with him forever just like this, arms wrapped around each other and close enough to feel the other’s heartbeat.

Hannibal hears when Will turns the lamp off, plunging the room into darkness.  He brings Triušis closer, so that he won’t risk losing him in the night.

Suddenly, Hannibal remembers a night from his childhood.  Mischa, having just heard a scary fairytale, had been too scared to go to sleep by herself, even with Triušis for protection.  Their parents had made her stay in her own room anyway, but as soon as they left she had snuck over to Hannibal’s room, braving the dark and drafty hallway to climb into his bed.  Hannibal had welcomed her in, of course—he knew she would be afraid that night, and had been planning to sneak into her room just a few minutes later to keep her company.

She had hugged him tightly, Triušis squished between them, and Hannibal had promised her that none of the monsters would be able to get her while she was with him.

Hannibal would give anything, anything, to have been able to keep that promise.

But he had only been prepared to keep out the fairytale monsters, confined to scary stories and Mischa’s imagination.  He hadn’t expected the men.

The men, who’d ripped her away from him, carrying her off so quickly that Hannibal hadn’t been able to respond to her final exclamation, the last words he’d ever hear her say.

“Myliu tave, Hannibal!”

Mischa is gone, but Will is here with him now, and he thinks he might love Will just as much as he’d loved her.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells Will in a whisper, his eyes falling shut a second later as he prepares to sleep.

“I love you too,” Will whispers back.  And finally, Hannibal allows himself to believe that Will just might stay.

With that security, Hannibal lets himself fall further into regression, his mind a haze of contentment and safety.  His mouth finds the collar of Will’s shirt where it meets his shoulder and he latches onto it, suckling on it for the soothing feeling it brings him, carrying him off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hannibal wakes early in the morning, just after sunrise.  He has a brief moment of confusion when he registers a presence entangled with him under the sheets, but soon all the memories of the previous night come tumbling back.  It wasn’t uncommon for Hannibal to have memory lapses when he was regressed, but he could, unfortunately, remember all of last night in excruciating detail, barring the first few minutes after he’d woken from his nightmare.

The plan had been so simple.  Grieve for Mischa in the morning and afternoon, put himself back together to meet Will in the evening.  Hannibal doesn’t think he’s ever failed so spectacularly at such a simple endeavour before in his life.

He had needed to be put-together in front of Will, clever and cunning, enticing him into the darkness that he already craved.  And what had he done instead?  He’d broken down in Will’s arms, cried like a child (as a child, really), made Will take care of him like he was some sort of vulnerable, dependent thing.  Like one of his dogs.

He’d wet the bed.  Will had to give him a bath.  He didn’t even get the dubious dignity of being a housebroken dog, no—he’d been an overeager little puppy, desperate for affection and approval.  Had he really told Will that he loved him?  He had.

Hannibal despised his child self.  It was weak, and naive, and should be dead already.  But he’d never quite been able to bring himself to kill it—it was the only part of himself that truly knew and remembered Mischa.  Even now, he didn’t want to kill it.  Besides, it was about 12 hours too late for that to be of any use.  The damage was already done—Will would never see him the same again, would never desire him the way he had before.

Hannibal hasn’t moved since waking up, still cuddled up against Will and Mischa’s rabbit.  He doesn’t want to move—in this position, he can almost pretend that Will had meant it when he’d said that he loved Hannibal, rather than the truth: that he’d given a necessary, perfunctory response to soothe a needy child.

Hannibal wasn’t sure that he could handle Will waking up and denying him.  He thought he actually might start crying again if that happened, reaching a new low point that he hadn’t even thought himself capable of until this morning.

If he killed Will now, before he woke up, he wouldn’t have to hear it.  He could pretend that maybe Will had meant it, that Lady Murasaki had been wrong when she’d said that there was nothing left in him to love.

Carefully, Hannibal breaks one hand free from Will’s hold and reaches under the bedframe to grab a scalpel taped underneath.  He slowly brings the scalpel close to Will’s neck, then pauses with a sigh.  He moves the scalpel away from Will’s body for a moment and carefully, with his other hand, removes Triušis from where he’s sandwiched against Hannibal’s side.  With both hands, he moves the rabbit to the other side of the bed, tucking it in gently.  He doesn’t want any blood to get on Mischa’s bunny.

With that taken care of, Hannibal moves the scalpel back to Will’s neck, grazing against the skin lightly.  Briefly, he considers strangling Will instead—there would be a lot less mess that way.  But that would take longer, and he’s not sure his resolve could last for more than the few seconds it would take to slit Will’s throat.  His resolve was already wavering, and he hadn’t even broken skin yet.

He doesn’t want to kill Will.  He just doesn’t.  But still, Will rejecting him would be worse.  Hannibal feels tears pooling in his eyes as he lays frozen, unable to commit.

Hannibal isn’t quite sure how long he stays like that for, but at some point Will’s eyes flutter open, locking onto Hannibal’s immediately.

“Morning, Hannibal,” he says, not seeming angry or even surprised at the situation unfolding.

He should kill Will now, before he has the chance to say another word.

Will gazes into him deeply with his perfect green-blue eyes.  In them, Hannibal sees sympathy and understanding.

Hannibal doesn’t want sympathy.  

He shouldn’t want sympathy.

Hannibal remains silent, frozen except for the tears trickling down his face.  When Will moves his hand up slowly, aiming to cover Hannibal’s holding the scalpel to his throat, Hannibal makes his decision.  He needs to kill Will, needs to do it now before Will tries to talk him out of it.  He allows himself a moment to collect his strength, and thrusts the blade into Will’s neck with all the force he can bring himself to use.  Tears flow rapidly as he does so, obscuring his vision into a messy blur.  Hannibal blinks them away a moment later, looking down at what he’s done.

Will is still staring up at him, throat intact, the scalpel barely having broken his skin.  A bead of blood forms beside the metal,  not quite enough for gravity to drag down.

When Will’s hand covers Hannibal’s own—gentle, not trying to pull it away, Hannibal feels a full-body shiver go through him.  It makes him want to sob, to collapse into Will and let the other man soothe him through every tremor.  But he can’t.  He knows better.

Because Will is going to turn him in to Jack and the FBI.  He’s going to betray Hannibal, and Hannibal won’t be able to seduce him out of it now that Will has seen him being so pathetic.  He’s going to have to pack his bags, and flee the country without Will—

“Hannibal,” Will whispers.

“Why?” Hannibal asks, keeping all emotion out of his tone, trying to build his forts back up.  He doesn’t know why he asked—he doesn’t want to hear what he knows the answer will be.

“Everything I said to you, Hannibal, I meant it,” Will tells him.

Hannibal doesn’t understand why Will feels the need to lie—he must know that if Hannibal was able to kill him, he would have done so already.  Perhaps he still sees Hannibal as the scared, vulnerable thing he was last night and feels the need to spare his feelings.

Hannibal feels his anger building at that thought—was this what all their interactions were going to be like from this point on?  Will tiptoeing around, trying to coddle him, all while he reported back to Jack his new findings?

“I understand that you have a strong protective instinct, that you are compelled to comfort the vulnerable.  But there is no need to coddle me now,” Hannibal states with venom.  He wishes Will would just get up and leave, giving Hannibal space to piece himself together and work out how best to remove all memories of last night from Will’s psyche.

“I’m not trying to coddle you,” Will says with frustration.  “I’m telling you the truth.”

Really, Will’s insistence on continuing with this lie was quite cruel.  Didn’t he know what he was doing to Hannibal?

“Great acts of cruelty require great empathy,” Hannibal spits out, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice, “but this is below the belt even for you.”

Will is silent for a moment, distress clear on his face.

“Why can’t you believe me?” he asks pleadingly.

Clearly, Will still thinks that Hannibal isn’t on to him, that he doesn’t know about Will’s double-cross.  Right now, Hannibal is hurting angry enough to remedy that assumption.  He can remember with such clarity the moment he had smelled Freddie’s perfume on Will—faint, but present, far too present for somebody who had supposedly died weeks ago.  He remembers regressing later that night, sobbing inconsolably because his favorite person didn’t really want him, he was just pretending.  He’d wet the bed that night, too.

“Where is Freddie Lounds, Will,” Hannibal asks in the calm, toneless voice of the Chesapeake Ripper, though the persona stubbornly refuses to emerge fully at the moment.

Will blinks, then states in a matter-of-fact tone, “She’s staying at a facility near Quantico—she’s supposed to stay there until the FBI has collected enough evidence to apprehend you.”

Hannibal had been expecting Will to deny everything, to stubbornly insist that she was dead.  He hadn’t been expecting honestly—why would Will do that?  Unless…

“And why are you admitting this to me now, Will?” Hannibal questions him abrasively.  “Have you already called in the calvary?”

“No,” Will denies, pausing a moment before adding,  “I’d like us to be far away from here by the time the calvary is called in, actually.”

Will couldn’t mean that.  Could he?  Hannibal wants to believe that he does so, so badly.  But he could just be stalling, waiting for a moment to escape or for backup to arrive.

Will continues to look up at him, eyes so soft, and Hannibal remembers how Will had comforted him every time the horrors of the past had come too close, chilling his flesh.  He remembers how Will had every opportunity to leave, and he’d chosen to stay.  He remembers how, when Will had said that he loved Hannibal, he’d sounded like he meant it. 

“Truly?” Hannibal questions, still somewhat disbelieving but ready to give in.  

“Truly,” Will affirms with certainty.

Slowly, Hannibal withdraws the scalpel from Will’s neck, watching a small rivulet of blood run down as he does so.  He sets the scalpel down on the bedside table and collapses into Will with a small, near-inaudible whine.  His mouth quickly finds the small trickle of blood, and he presses his lips to it softly, his eyes fluttering closed as he gets a small taste.

“I love you,” he hears Will murmur to him, and he lets himself believe it.  He can feel Will’s warmth all around him, penetrating deep into his bones.

“What does ‘Triušis’ mean?” Will asks after a minute.

“Bunny,” Hannibal replies, smiling in amusement as he recalls Mischa’s enthusiastic, if uncreative, decree.  “Mischa was only three when I gave him to her, and she had yet to refine her naming abilities.”

“It was her birthday yesterday,” Hannibal adds on after a moment, the statement only causing him a small amount of pain.  

“Happy birthday, Mischa,” Will says, running a hand down Hannibal’s back soothingly.

“Happy birthday,” Hannibal echoes softly, trying to bury himself impossibly farther into Will’s warmth.

Will wraps his arms around Hannibal, holding him tightly, and Hannibal thinks of nothing but Will, and warmth, and love.