Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And when I got into the accident,

The sight that flashed before me was your face.

November 14, 2014. Before.

The hospital room smells like antiseptic, cold and sterile, when Will’s eyes open. 

Waking is an agony. Everything is too sharp, too bright. His body feels like a foreign thing—aching, broken, alien. A tremor runs through him as he tries to move, instinctively drawing his arms toward his chest to shield himself. His stomach protests, sending a flash of searing pain through him, and he can’t hold back the ragged gasp that escapes his lips.

The pulse of his heartbeat is loud in his ears, a drumbeat that echoes over the rushing sounds of his thoughts. His mind snaps back to it—the darkness, the cold steel of the knife buried deep inside him, the way the world had tilted as Hannibal’s eyes had locked onto his, Will’s mind flooded with the combined force of their betrayals.

Abigail.

Abigail.

She had been alive.

She had been alive, and Will had been too late.

Too late.

The thought is a guttural ache, a poison that burns through him, curling deep into the pit of his stomach. He can’t breathe. His chest tightens, the air thickening around him until his lungs refuse to take in anything at all. He chokes, the sob strangling itself before it can escape.

Her eyes.

The tears come without warning. They burn down his face, hot and relentless, and Will can’t stop them. Can’t stop anything. Not the flood of pain, not the way his body trembles with the force of it. The blood on his hands—her blood on his hands—is still fresh, still heavy with the weight of what he had lost.

He had failed her.

He makes out the soft click of the door in the background, but he doesn’t look up. He can’t. His gaze remains fixed on the empty space in front of him, his chest rising and falling erratically, but he can’t draw in enough air to steady himself.

"Will," a voice says, gentle and careful. Jack.

Will doesn’t move. Doesn’t even acknowledge him. He doesn't want to be seen like this, doesn’t want to be looked at with pity, with judgment. He can’t bear it. Not now.

"Will," Jack repeats more sternly, and this time, Will forces himself to look up. Just for a second. Just long enough to see Jack’s weathered face, the traces of exhaustion around his eyes, the burden of the choices they’ve both made.

Will can’t breathe around the weight of it. He shakes his head, his lips trembling as he speaks, his voice a raw rasp. “I couldn’t save her.” 

Jack speaks, his voice quiet, but firm. “You couldn’t have saved her, Will. Not from him. Not from Hannibal.” Will nearly scoffs. His words mean nothing, not when the image of Abigail’s wide, terrified eyes is seared into his mind. Not when the taste of betrayal is still bitter on his tongue, the knife in his gut a reminder of everything Hannibal had taken.

“You should have let it kill me,” Will whispers. “You should have let me die.” 

It’s clear to him now. This is what Hannibal wanted. Hannibal did not want Will dead, no, that would be far too easy a punishment for the betrayal he had so clearly felt. He wanted Will to live with the pain, with the guilt. To be alive while Abigail was not.

“He kept her from me,” Will spits, the words bitter as they scrape out of his throat. His eyes lock with Jack’s, blazing with anger. “She was alive, and I didn’t know. And now I’ll never get to go back, I’ll never get to make it right.”

Jack doesn’t respond immediately, the silence heavy between them. Will feels it—the unspoken judgment, the sorrow Jack is trying to hide behind his stoic expression. But Will knows him too well now. He can read the man like a book, and the words Jack doesn’t say cut deeper than anything he could ever speak aloud.

“Would you have chosen differently, if you had known she was alive?” Jack asks, careful yet probing.

Will shuts his eyes; his silence answers enough. He flinches away from the resignation he feels from where Jack stands. 

“I don’t want to be here,” he whispers. “Not like this.”

The words hang in the air, heavy and final, as if everything inside him has already given up.

Jack's own float beside them, meaningless. “This was the right thing. You couldn’t have stopped him, no matter what he may have made you think. You’re here. That’s what’s important now.”

Couldn’t have saved Abigail. Couldn’t have stopped Hannibal. Couldn’t have stopped the game that they’d been playing, as if he had ever had a chance to win.

The anger surges through him, raw and uncontrollable. Anger at himself. Anger at Hannibal. At the lies. At the things he thought he could fix—if he had just seen things differently, if he had trusted himself more.

The rage burns through him like fire, but it’s not just at Hannibal. It’s at the twisted, broken bond they shared—the times Will had felt understood, cherished even. The moments when Hannibal had looked at him with that look—like he was something more than just prey.

And Will had wanted that. He had wanted it, had wanted Hannibal.

A flash of disgust blooms in his chest. How could he have wanted it? Had Hannibal broken him so severely, unlocked some caged part of him that craved such a thing?

“No more, Jack. Please.”

Chapter Text

But when I walked up to the podium,
I think that I forgot to say your name.

May 9, 2016. After.

Water rocks the boat in slow, steady motions, the kind that can lull a person to sleep if they aren’t careful. Will sits at the edge, fishing rod loose in his hands, staring at the ripples spreading out across the bayou. He hasn’t caught anything all afternoon; he hasn’t really been trying.

He still isn’t used to being back in Louisiana. The air is too thick, too heavy with humidity even this late in the day, and the scent of cypress and damp earth cling to everything. It is all too much. It is all not enough.

He had moved here a few months ago, accepted a position at a small university once they had discharged him from the hospital after the accident.

He appreciates the quiet and the routine, at least. 

He sighs, running a hand over his face before reeling back the empty line. Enough for today. 

He turns the boat back toward shore, letting the engine hum beneath him as the trees blur past. It had been nice avoiding the responsibilities at his desk for a few hours—papers to grade, lectures to plan, emails to answer.

Going through the motions. As always.

Winston is at his heels the instant he opens the door of his home. Will smiles, ruffling his fur as he makes his way into the kitchen. “No fish today, bud. Sorry. Got distracted.”

There’s enough meat left in the fridge for Winston, at least, Will decides, forgoing his own dinner. He doesn’t feel very hungry—hasn’t, not for a while. A side effect, maybe, of the medication he had been put on after the accident.

Less hunger, more emptiness.

His home, his heart, all devoid of something he aches for yet cannot name.

“Come on. I promise I’ll go out and buy more tomorrow.”

Subject: Invitation to the Annual European Symposium on Ecology and Entomology

Dear Professor Graham,

On behalf of the European Society of Entomology, we are pleased to invite you to participate as a guest speaker for our Annual Symposium on Ecology and Entomology. It will be hosted at the Palazzo Capponi in Florence, Italy this spring. We are highly impressed by your recent research and believe your insight would provide valuable at this conference.

Your latest paper on the evolutionary mechanism of mimicry and the predator-prey dynamic has sparked interest in our board. A spot has recently opened for a guest speaker, and thus we apologise for the shorter notice. 

We understand that international travel is a considerable commitment, and we are happy to arrange any accommodations should you choose to attend. Please let us know at your earliest convenience if you would be available and interested to participate.

We look forward to the possibility of welcoming you to Florence.

The whiskey burns pleasantly down Will’s throat before he puts the glass back down, scooting his chair closer to the dining table. The glow of his computer screen is faint against the dimness of his room as he glances through his inbox. 

Faculty notices, reminders of missed deadlines, nothing urgent.

Except.

Will frowns, clicking on the newest email, one from a Dr. Eugenio Ricci. His latest paper. Predator-prey dynamics. A last minute opening. Florence.

He doesn’t recognize the name, but a hint of familiarity tugs at him nonetheless.

Florence.

He has never been one for travel, and most certainly not outside of the States. Still, Florence sends a dizzying wave of something through him. He hasn’t thought of visiting Florence—ever—he doesn’t remember even thinking of Florence. Why would he?

(You need to go. You need to see— you need to go. You were meant to. Remember? Remember? Remember? Remember.)

His blood is rushing in his ears.

A flash of pain brings him back to his senses. His hand instinctively finds itself harshly pressed against the scar on his stomach as it burns through him. A phantom pain, dull and distant. A trick of the body. All it was.

The doctor’s had called it trauma-induced amnesia, the gaps he couldn’t quite fill in. ( Florence why Florence Florence Florence need to go need to go need to see him need need—) Even the accident itself was a blur to him. A sharp sting, a bleary haze of pain. 

(Florence.)

His fingers move on their own.

I will be there.

He doesn't know why, and he doesn't know what he expects to find, but something inside him whispers that the answers lie there, waiting for him in the heart of Florence.

Chapter Text

In his youth, Hannibal’s room had been filled with discarded notebooks, overflowing with equations that had meant next to nothing—teacups left unmended by time. It refused to turn back for him. His frustrations had been then taken out on the streets of Florence, channeling his loss into something tangible. 

It is only appropriate, he thinks bitterly, that he finds himself doing the same with this loss.

Hannibal had happened once. Been changed irreparably. He had not believed himself capable of changing again. 

Will Graham was constantly his exception.

He was tempted to visit the equations again. He was wiser now, after all. But what would he change? Would he save Mischa, save himself the burden of ever becoming what he is now? Would it be fruitless, would the monster still find its way to the surface? 

(Would he erase his first meeting with Will? Would he never let the fragile, intuitive nature of Will Graham weaken him?)

(Or perhaps , would he send Will in for a brain scan with the first notes of disease he sensed? Would he plant the evidence towards Chilton earlier, save Will the trouble of a jail cell? Would he tell him Abigail was safe? Would he somehow fix the shakiness of their foundations, have Will by his side again?)

He has been patient, yet Will clings to him. He walks through his old hunting grounds, cooks his favorite meals, makes love to Bedelia, lives his life as he would have before Will. 

It does not work. He cannot forget, as much as he tries. The taste of Will's name lingers on his tongue, his absence a presence in itself—constant and suffocating. A hole Hannibal had foolishly carved into himself, not knowing the knife had been there until it was far too late, two hearts bleeding out onto his kitchen floor.

He manages six months before his curiosity gets the better of him. Four months of forcing down every thought of Will, of ignoring every urge to send him a letter, to see how he has been, to forgive. Four months, and he is on TattleCrime once more, for once appreciating Freddie Lounds’s lack of boundaries when they give him a clearer picture of Will Graham.

Except.

Except there’s nothing. No mention of his name on the front page. No mention of his name at all , in fact, when Hannibal puts his name into the search bar. No new articles, and somehow, no old ones. 

Hannibal stares at the screen, his pulse quickening as the emptiness before him begins to take on a weight of its own. His mind works furiously, trying to make sense of the absence. Will’s name should be there. It should have been mentioned, somewhere, in some context. He knows it was there. Articles defaming his brilliant boy, where are they now?

They were there.

But there is nothing.

Impossible.

His eyes narrow. What could convince Freddie to erase their shared obsession so completely? The thought begins to take root in his mind, the unsettling notion that someone must have gone to great lengths to hide Will from prying gazes. From him .

Was Will hiding from him?

Foolish thing. Hannibal would always find him.

He closes his eyes, forcing the sudden rush of emotion back down into the depths of himself, where it can be controlled. He is not used to this feeling—this quiet, insidious powerlessness. The weakness that is not knowing. 

(He’s not used to the other feeling, either—the betrayal. 

The heartbreak.)

Any progress he may have made is gone, suddenly. The thoughts of Will Graham he had tried the most to lock away flood his mind, every room in his memories that had held the ghost of bitten lips and unruly curls and piercingly perceptive blue eyes, doors blown open.

Hannibal Lecter. A man who had once believed himself invincible, dizzied by mere silence. 

Will is nowhere, but he is everywhere .

In the glint of silverware, in the scent of dogs on the street, in the quiet stretch of silence before a violin swells. Hannibal tries to grasp at something—anything—that will anchor him to the present, but everything he touches is threaded with Will. 

He moves through the house like it’s foreign, a museum of restraint. He steps into the kitchen and imagines Will sitting at the counter, legs crossed, one hand absentmindedly stirring coffee. He opens a book and hears Will scoff from memory, see the frown tug at his brow when Hannibal reads a passage aloud. He enters his study and sees the outline of Will’s back hunched over the chessboard, chewing on his thumbnail, calculating moves, calculating exactly what it takes to bring Hannibal to his knees.

(Nothing at all, apparently.)

“The body is designed to protect itself,” Hannibal says. He’s seated by the window, hands folded neatly in his lap, posture much more composed than how he feels. The fire is low, casting flickering shadows that dance across the lines of his face. "And yet it leads us to ruin so effortlessly. We survive disease, starvation, and near death. All to falter at the hands of longing.”

Bedelia reclines on the chaise with the air of someone unbothered. He knows she is not. She knows he knows she is not. Her glass rests untouched on the side table as she studies him with a glacial curiosity, the fear carefully masked behind her eyes.

“Because the body is not interested in logic,” she replies finally. “It was never built for reason. The body reacts, it yearns, it reaches for what brings warmth, never discerning whether that warmth comes from a gentle touch or a scorching flame. It does not pause to question. It does not ask whether the comfort it seeks will cost it blood. It does not care . It only wants. Desire is not a flaw—it is simply inconvenient for men like you.”

“Men like me?”

“Men who believe they are above wanting.” She crosses one leg over the other, eyes narrowing. “You thought you could curate your hunger into something noble. But you forget—no matter how elegantly you dress it, the appetite is still feral. And desire,” she adds, tilting her head, “is its most honest manifestation.”

Hannibal exhales slowly, though his breath is steady. Always steady. Only the tightness in his jaw betrays him.

“I have never denied myself,” he says, more to the fire in the hearth than to her. “Only refined the manner in which I take. I have elevated desire. Tempered it. I turned it into something civilized.”

“You caged it,” Bedelia corrects. “Dressed it in Latin and string quartets and called it restraint. But it was never gone. It was simply waiting. And now it’s loose. Desire refuses to be bound.”

He looks up at her sharply.

“And what do you suggest I do with it?”

She scoffs.

“You’ll do what you always do,” she says. “You’ll follow it. And then, when it brings you pain—as it inevitably will—you’ll pretend it was all part of some grand design. You’ll make suffering look like orchestration. You always have.”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts his glass, inspects the wine against the light like it might offer revelation.

His chest aches.

“And yet,” he murmurs, allowing himself this, this brief moment of honesty, “I would still choose it. Even now. Even knowing the cost. I would walk into the fire again if it meant seeing him once more. Of keeping him for a while longer.”

Bedelia watches him for a long moment. Then, softly:

“That is the tragedy, Hannibal. You mistake the fire for salvation.”

Chapter Text

The light in Florence feels different. It slants through narrow streets like it belongs here—older than the city itself, softened by stone and time. 

Will didn’t sleep much last night. 

Now, late morning, he sits at a small iron table outside a café near Piazza Santo Spirito, fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee that tastes like scorched earth. The cup is still full. Holding it just gives his hands something to do.

Across from him, Dr. Eugenio Ricci folds his napkin with precise fingers. He’s in his fifties, maybe, with a neatly trimmed beard and glasses that make his eyes look almost comically large. His suit is navy, slightly worn at the cuffs. There’s a pen in his breast pocket, blue ink stained into the fabric. He has not noticed it. Will does not mention it to him.

“We’re glad you came,” Ricci says in careful English. “Short notice, I know. Most Americans would not cross the ocean for insects.”

Will offers a dry smile. “They should. Insects are a good excuse to leave the country.”

Ricci chuckles politely. He doesn’t push. Will appreciates that.

“You’ll be speaking on Friday,” Ricci says, tapping the itinerary on the table between them. “Panel discussion first, then your presentation. I believe the hall will be full. The Capponi is… well, it’s old. Expect terrible acoustics and beautiful walls.”

Will nod. “I’ll project.”

“Please do.”

They lapse into silence for a moment. Will watches a pigeon try to steal a croissant from an unattended plate at the next table. The waiter shoos it away with a muttered curse. Tourists laugh. The air smells like lemon and warm bread.

Ricci clears his throat. “I read your paper again last night. That part about how even false predators can provoke real fear. Fascinating.”

Will shrugs. “Sometimes deception works better than truth. Nature’s efficient.”

Ricci tilts his head. “Do you believe that holds true for people?”

It’s not an accusation, just curiosity. Will’s pulse jumps regardless. 

Why would it be an accusation?

(...a reality where only you and the fish exist, where your lure becomes what he wants most, despite everything he knows…)

Will stares into his cup, a chill running down his spine. “Maybe. People are animals. We pretend we’re not.”

“Hmm,” Ricci says, smiling. “The great lie of civilization.”

The conversation drifts then—talk of local flora, the afternoon’s welcome luncheon, whether jet lag has killed Will’s appetite. It has. Will says he’ll try anyway. Ricci looks pleased.

All the way back to his hotel, Will thinks of fish and lures and blood and everything in between. Which is, of course, nothing. It always is.

After a call to the neighbor watching Winston, with the rest of the day in front of him, Will moves through the city without much thought, eventually finding himself filtering through the shelves of a quaint and mostly empty bookstore. It’s nice. He can think there.

He’s leafing through an out-of-print volume on beetle taxonomy when he hears the voice.

“That one’s dreadful.”

The voice comes from behind him—smooth, British, and unmistakably amused.

Will turns.

The man is tall, leaning against a shelf like it owes him money. He’s wearing a deep green blazer and a patterned scarf, the kind of combination that looks both effortless and carefully curated. His hair is slightly disheveled, but the effect feels intentional. He looks like someone who’s been to far too many gallery openings.

“Dreadful,” he repeats. “I read it on a flight once. Nearly abandoned it in a bathroom in London.”

Will raises an eyebrow. “But you didn’t.”

“No,” the man admits, “I’m sentimental. Also, it had a rather charming drawing of a tiger beetle near the back. Kept it for that alone.”

Will lets the corner of his mouth lift. “Beetles do make good art.”

“They do. Apparently bad writing, though,” the man says. “I suppose bad writing has its place. Doorstops. Campfires.” Will snorts in spite of himself. The man steps closer, tilting his head. “American? Not as gaudy as a tourist, you had me fooled.”

“Not much touring.” He debates briefly whether or not to tell the man what his business is in Italy, but decides there’s no harm in making conversation. “Here for a conference, is all.”

“Let me guess,” the man says, eyes scrunching in concentration “Entomology?”

Will blinks. “How’d you—”

“Lucky guess,” he says, grinning. “No one else would bore themselves in this section of the bookstore, now would they? I also happen to be working at one this week.” He gives Will a look up and down. “Lucky indeed,” he affirms.

Will has no idea what to say to that. “What a coincidence,” he says, nearly cringing at how flat his voice sounds. Is this flirting? Is he meant to flirt back?

“Antony Dimmond,” the man says, offering his hand. “I teach literature. Occasionally. Mostly I drink wine and ruin dinner parties.”

Will shakes his hand, bewildered. “Will Graham.”

Dimmond grins. “Lovely to meet you, Will Graham. If you get bored of your beetles, I recommend the poetry section upstairs. Mostly forgotten female mystics and romantic failings. Much more interesting.”

“I’ll…keep that in mind,” Will says, unsure of what to make of this whole interaction.

Dimmond winks and walks off. 

Will eventually leaves the shop with empty hands.