Losing You Terrifies Me

Chapter 40

Hannibal felt like the emptiness had finally reached his chest. The very last time he ever felt like this was when he was eight years old. The day he learned that he would never see his sister again. It became easier when he realized that although she was dead, she would always be with him.

In the same way that Will would always be with Hannibal, even if they were apart. Would feel Hannibal. Will knew him intimately enough. They were one and had been for so long that Hannibal was certain that, even if Will didn't remember him, Will would still know the exact moment when Hannibal died.

I will follow you. Will had promised and Will kept his promises. The idea was slightly terrifying in a way. How had Hannibal tied them up so tightly together even after everything he had done? After every horrid thing they had done or said to one another? It was exhausting.

And Hannibal was simply just that. Tired. So incredibly worn down, the markings around his neck only being one such indicator. Will had been his stability, his rest and recharge and now with Will out of the picture, and Hannibal was determined to keep him out of the picture, he had the overwhelming need to return to his beginning. To restart where everything had started, whatever that restart was.

Mano mergina, aš noriu grįžti namo. (Little one, I want to go home)

This trip home would be the last. It would be the last time he would have enough strength to face that place again. One last time to see his sister and apologize for everything he had done before finally joining them. It was only fair. Only right. Poetic in every sense of the word. Fitting that he should end right where the rest of them had.

He couldn't leave just yet though. He couldn't abandon Will in such a way. Not his precious Will, a swirling pitfall of light and dark that were forever battling for control. Will deserved a better goodbye than a book to the head. Deserved some explanation as to why he had left, Walter only being one piece of the puzzle.

One last game. One last chase. One last display for Will. One of blood, guts and glory. A final masterpiece made to absolute perfection. It wouldn't be his magnum opus, but he would make it as beautiful as he could for his magnum opus to find.

Days ticked by as he watched and waited. Waited for just what he needed. Two people. The last two. Both to be cast in Michelangelo's fresco secco.

Perfection, often strived for, but not often achieved would be Hannibal's greatest challenge. This would be perfection. Absolute and utter perfection if such a form were able to be reached by men. And a man was what Hannibal was. Nothing less and nothing more even if he liked to live like a god among them.

Winter was starting to give way to spring, but on the coast, the ocean kept his art room ideally cool, allowing him to work as he needed for endless hours. A week passed by and then another, mind and body a slave to his creation.

With it finally finished and left to be either forgotten or immortalized, Hannibal made his way back down the coast and to where Will now occupied with his son.

An estate from slaughtering and packaging pigs. A house ran by two women and their own little boy. A home that Hannibal watched religiously, trying to find anything he could as a last hint of his husband's welfare.

Will stayed in bed most days, looking just as exhausted as Hannibal felt. Walter stayed by his side like a puppy and Morgan just as dutifully by Walter.

It was early morning by the time the lights had finally given way to darkness in that house and Hannibal snuck in through a window to find himself in Will's room.

The man was alone, Walter never allowed to stay with him at night, though Hannibal didn't have a clear answer as to why Will had been allowed to stay for that matter. But neither of those mattered.