Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Judas had the decency to hang himself in shame at his betrayals. But I thought you’d need help.”

The words filter into Will Graham’s mind through a cotton haze. His body is heavy, unaccountably so, and his face is pressed into something stiff and perfumed. Incense, his sluggish brain provides. The whole room stinks of it. And the voice- the voice had echoed. Church, he thinks.

He manages to open his eyes.

Cathedral, he corrects.

“You’re a nurse at the hospital. Are you setting a new standard of care?” asks Hannibal Lecter, somewhere not entirely far off, but Will can’t see him. His voice is electrifying. It makes Will want to snarl, to snap, to hurl himself to his feet.

He manages to groan.

“Are you Will Graham’s admirer?”

Memories start reassembling themselves into a usable order. The BSHCI. An interview for Tattlecrime. The orderly. Matthew Brown, he thinks, and when he at last manages to move, he gets halfway to sitting.

And there’s Matthew Brown, crouching beside him to provide support. His mouth is pulled into a wicked, exultant grin. “We have a mutual respect,” he says, and his eyes never leave Will’s.

This is bad.

Will has no idea what drugs are in his system, though some must be. He doesn’t remember getting here. He doesn’t remember leaving. Matthew must have given him something, then smuggled him out. Matthew Brown has taken it upon himself to expand on Will’s request, and Hannibal Lecter is-

Hannibal Lecter is bound as if on a cross, right there before the altar. Tape secures his arms to a broomstick, and there is a noose around his neck, strung from an access balcony high above. His toes barely touch the bucket he is balancing precariously on, itself unable to rest flat due to loops that hold its handle. He’s naked except for what must be a swimsuit, and his gaze burns into Will.

He’s not afraid. Not angry, either.

He’s curious.

Will can’t look away.

“Will’s not what you think he is,” Lecter says. “He’s not a murderer.”

Matthew smiles, broad enough that Will can see it even through his tunnel vision. “He’s about to be.”

I want you to kill Hannibal Lecter.

The words echo for a long time after Matthew leaves him, after another orderly brings him his dinner. They are a living thing, settled across his shoulders like a mantle. He does not regret them.

He feels righteous.

The tray sits abandoned beside him. Lecter may kill to satisfy a hunger, but Will feels hollow. Purified. Like a saint, he has no need of food. The cup, though, is empty; the orange juice was bordering on bitter, and the acidity cleansed his throat, as if erasing evidence.

He wonders how Matthew is going to do it.

He can imagine a hundred different ways, from simple shootings to elaborate displays, and none of them feel right. All of them feel right. To refuse Lecter his suffering, or to take revenge, pound by pound, from his flesh. To reduce him to a body in a back alley, or to unspool his intestines, pulling them into the light inch by inch, until he is inverted, hollowed out like a boat, and into him pour every scrap of rage and disgust and hatred Will has left.

But Matthew doesn’t understand enough to do it right, just to do it, and that will have to be enough.

His hands itch to settle around Lecter’s throat. To feel the life inside of him, to pin it down, to prove he’s mortal. The itch spreads to Will’s arms, his shoulders, down his back. He arches where he sits, then shudders, feels pressure building. Something is below his skin. Something lives there, rampant, ready.

He strips out of the top half of his jumpsuit, yanks his shirt over his head. He reaches, expecting to find nothing. His fingertips brush antler tines, pushing out along either side of his spine, growing, growing, they have been tangled up inside him for days and weeks and months, they are what was perched under his jaw, the scream that wanted to emerge and break the world, snarled and dripping and vicious.

They will tear him apart. They will leave nothing left. He gasps and writhes upon his knees, becoming the altar, the display upon which knowledge will be offered: Hannibal Lecter’s body impaled beneath the sun, the two of them locked together, back to back.

There can be no end without a joining.

The world flickers in and out. There are footsteps beyond the bars of his cage, the creak of wheels. The jingle of keys.

He can’t see, when the door opens.

He only distantly registers the hands that guide him into a wheelchair. His last thought is that there’s no way that he can fit, not with death tangled around his spine.

The only light from the outside world is a sodium glow distorted by thick panes of colored glass. Inside, an electric chandelier burns above the center of the aisle, candles flicker upon the altar, and everything else is shadow. It creates a world only large enough to contain the three of them.

His body doesn’t want to obey his mind. It bucks and kicks at the demands of his motor cortex, but he gets to his feet eventually. Matthew helps, a hand below his elbow. His eyes are bright as he watches, his lips curling, helpless in his adoration, in his excitement.

“I asked you to do it,” Will says, low enough that Lecter might not hear, “because I couldn’t leave the hospital.”

“I’ve given you freedom, Mr. Graham. After this, we can go anywhere. I have some money. I know how not to get caught. You know how not to get caught.”

And isn’t this what he wanted? Revenge, escape, abnegation. Out here, he can disperse into the world. In there, all he could have ever done was dissolve into himself. His back aches, and he doesn’t know if it’s the real remains of however Matthew brought him here, or some ghostly echo of his own vicious delight, but it pushes him forward. Step by step, closer and closer, until he stands before Lecter awash in bloody reverence.

“You always manage to surprise me, Will,” Lecter says, fighting to enunciate over the bite of the rope.

“Shut up,” Will says.

Matthew draws up close behind him. He has a gun tucked into his waistband, clearly visible with his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose upon his shoulders. Vulgar, all vulgar. But in his hand is a knife, simple and plain.

“I’d planned to cut his wrists open,” Matthew says, and the monster that lives in the darker folds of Will’s mind rolls over once in disgust. Double the suicide imagery, double the disappointment. But he knew that Matthew isn’t creative; he’s a sycophant, a mimic, a half-formed beast looking for an outline to take as his own. He killed the bailiff, yes; he could never have killed the judge.

Will’s gaze rises back to Lecter.

Lecter killed the judge.

And now here he is, strung up in tableau, another neat little copy. A stolen outline.

“Give me the knife,” Will says, holding out a hand. It trembles slightly, unsteady from the lingering whisper of drugs. Drugs from the orange juice, to keep him compliant, to fool whoever Matthew needed to in order to get him out. Matthew, as much as Lecter, seems all too eager to decide what manner of treatment Will receives. He is to be a hawk in a falcon hood, unwanted and ill-fitting.

Matthew hands him the knife. For now, their desires align. The rest can be dealt with after.

“And what will you do?” Lecter asks. The bucket rattles. His body jerks as he tries to balance, as his bare feet push at the wood. There must be splinters in his soles by now. Medication in his bloodstream, too, blunting his affect? Or is it only his normal calm, his self-control, that stability that was always so comforting to be in the presence of?

Is there a difference for him, between killing and being killed, or is it only important that death be in the room?

Standing here, now, Will doesn’t know what he wants. Doesn’t know where to start. The knife is heavy in his hand, and there are so many places he could begin to peel back Lecter’s person suit. He should act out every violence Lecter blamed on him; pull his lung from him while he still breathes, impale him on antlers, cut his mouth from ear to ear and drag back his head until he’s nearly decapitated, set him on fire, eat him, devour him until there is nothing left. Until they cannot be separated. Until they blur into one another, and Will isn’t himself anymore.

No.

No, he can’t do that. Not even for poetic justice. Lecter wins, if he does that.

“Well?” Lecter rasps. “They must know you’re gone. They will come looking.”

“Mr. Graham said to shut up,” Matthew says, leaving Will’s side. It isn’t until he moves that Will remembers that he’s here, watching, judging, delighting. It’s an intrusion. He doesn’t like it.

But Lecter is right. He does not have the luxury of contemplation. Matthew Brown may think he knows how not to get caught, but Will knows better.

“Don’t touch him,” Will says, when Matthew draws close to Lecter. Lecter’s mouth twitches into a small snarl, but if it’s at the proximity or just the discomfort of his pose is hard to say. Will thinks about slicing his throat, soaking the rope red. It wouldn’t take very long. They could be far away within the hour.

But a fast death is too fast; over and done, before and after. He wants to linger in this moment with Lecter for as long as he is able.

Perhaps Matthew’s original idea has some merit.

He tears his gaze away from Lecter and instead inspects the knife. Well made, with a fixed, stout blade, something designed for work, something almost like what he’d buy for himself. But it’s not his. Nothing in this world is his anymore, not even his mind. Everything tainted, stolen, overlaid.

There was never any hope of redemption, or freedom, or finding himself again. This is the closest he will ever come.

He steps up onto the dais.

Will’s knife cuts into Lecter’s left forearm. Drags from halfway to the elbow across to the wrist, skin parting smooth and deep, flesh unstitching itself, peeling back, revealing darkness within. 

Lecter jerks, but not far enough, not quickly enough. The blade is sharp. Blood wells fast and thick. Pours forth, an offering, a libation, and it’s covering Will, too, swallowing him whole. He shudders, gasping, staring, and then he looks up at Lecter, who looks back at him with that same fucking curiosity, and behind it, adoration.

No fear. Never fear. How dare he not feel fear?

It’s too much. He retreats, haphazard, tripping on his own feet. Matthew catches him, grabs hold of his hand before he can drop the knife.

“Easy there, Mr. Graham,” he says. “One more to go. Don’t lose your head in all the excitement.” 

Lecter is panting from the pain, but it’s the only sign Will’s hurt him. He just watches as the noose bites into his throat, bunches up beneath his jaw, and the switch flips again, from too much to not enough. They are the same thing, seen from different angles. Fear and excitement, both adrenaline responses, the only difference the context.

Will snarls and shoves Matthew away, and grabs Lecter’s right wrist. It’s easier this time, cutting, gouging, and he presses deeper, deep enough that Lecter, at last, hisses. Bucks against Will’s grasp, hard enough that he almost loses his perch on the bucket. He jerks his hips in a wild attempt to regain it, and Will thinks about pushing him again, about making him fight. Skin on skin on skin is a revelation he wants to know before the end. Hannibal has taken it from him by force, and he can do the same.

All the while, Matthew watches. Pacing around them, hand over his mouth, barely hiding a grin.

It is glorious. It is terrible. Matthew Brown shouldn’t be here to see it.

Will shouldn’t be here at all. 

What have you done ? Beverly’s voice whispers in his ear.

The knife falls from his nerveless fingers. He staggers, listing to one side, barely seeing Matthew stoop to retrieve the blade. He doesn’t see anything but the violence he has wrought.

This is for you, he wants to say. Beverly doesn’t care. Beverly would have never asked this of him.

“Now,” Matthew says, standing between the two of them, right foot almost touching the spread of blood through the rug, and Will can barely hear his voice, “we’re going to ask you a few questions while you still have enough blood coursing through your brain to answer them. Mr. Graham deserves some answers, don’t you think?”

Lecter’s jaw tightens as he fights to stay upright. There is so much blood pouring from his wrists. It won’t take long for him to lose consciousness. Will cut deep. “Yes,” Lecter says, and Will jerks as if he’s been shot. “But only he should hear them.”

“You don’t get to make the decisions,” Matthew says, and even if it’s meant for Lecter, Will knows that it’s just as much for him. 

No decisions left. This isn’t his design.

Matthew approaches Lecter until he’s close enough that Lecter must feel the heat of his breath. “Did you kill the judge?” he asks.

Of course he did, Will wants to shout, but instead he looks into Lecter’s eyes, willing him to lie. Matthew doesn’t deserve the truth, even if Will does.

“I can ask you yes-or-no questions,” Matthew says, when Lecter doesn’t respond immediately, “and you don't have to say a word. I'll know what the answer is. The pupil dilates with specific mental efforts. You dilate, that's a ‘yes’. No dilation equals ‘no’.”

Bunk science, and something Lecter, of all people, could fool, but he must not be trying, because Matthew grins. “That’s a yes,” he says, glancing back at Will. A dog hoping for a treat.

“Of course it’s a yes,” Will says, letting all his derision flood his voice. The antithesis of what Matthew wants, except Matthew doesn’t flinch. He must assume the derision is for Lecter.

Matthew turns back to Lecter, whose tanned skin doesn’t show his pallor in the low light, but his lips must be growing bloodless by now.

“Are you the Chesapeake Ripper?” Matthew asks.

“Yes, he is,” Will answers for him. “Matthew, stop. I know everything I need to know.”

“Do you?” Matthew asks. 

No, Will thinks, but this flensing of veneer from truth is too personal. Matthew shouldn’t be here. It’s all he can think of, and he catches Lecter’s eye, and thinks he sees the same. For a moment, he hesitates, trapped between what he wants, and what he wants to deny Lecter.

But in the end, they are bound together, and Matthew is the interloper. “I do,” Will says.

Matthew looks between them, then shrugs. “Okay,” he says.

He kicks the bucket out from under Lecter’s feet. 

The rope pulls tight. Lecter makes a strangled sound, and then nothing, nothing except the patter of blood, the soft shushing as he kicks his legs in an attempt to live, and this should feel good, but Will only hears a roaring in his ears.

Not like this, it screams. Not like this.

He lunges.

Matthew catches him with an arm around his waist. “No, no, Mr. Graham,” he murmurs, a mockery of a soothing nurse. “No second chances here. You said it yourself, you have everything you need. And it’s not him.”

It crystalizes, then, what Will was too focused on Lecter to see before: Matthew is jealous. Hawks on a wire, and Hannibal Lecter is one of them, bigger and stronger and scarier than Matthew, and Will can’t be allowed to choose him.

This is not for Will’s sake, and never has been. It’s for Matthew’s: his aggrandizement, his deification, his display of mastery over a worthy opponent. And all of it, a performance for Will to see and approve of and need.

Will grabs for the gun in Matthew’s waistband. His fingers close over the grip. He looks up, and Matthew’s eyes narrow. “Don’t be hasty,” he warns, barely audible over Hannibal’s thrashing, and Will doesn’t care, Will yanks the gun free, tries to pull away enough to get it up between them, but Matthew is strong, he’s fucking built of wire and muscle and sinew, and he still has the knife in one hand.

The knife, still slick with Hannibal’s blood, drives into his side. 

The gun hits the floor, and doesn’t discharge. Matthew grabs him by the nape of his neck and jerks the blade, and it’s still so sharp. Will’s flesh falls open. He howls, and tries not to thrash, tries not to make it worse.

He puts all his agony into his fist and drives it into Matthew’s diaphragm instead. 

They go down in a heap, and Will is on top of him, hands tangling in his hair. His belly feels like it’s hanging open, drowning them both, but it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.

He smashes Matthew’s head into the floor and hears the bone crack. His vision swims, and his belly is a white hot fountain of agony, and he doesn’t care. He slams a fist into Matthew’s face, and for a moment, Matthew is grinning, he’s laughing, Will can hear him saying That’s it, that’s the hawk!  

But he isn’t saying anything at all.

He isn’t moving.

His face is a scrap heap of blood and spit and bone. His body is limp. Will stares down at it, listing to one side.

Above his own ragged breathing, he hears again the thrashing of Hannibal’s body. Weaker, this time. If he just lies down here, dies in the mess that he’s made, it will all be over. Hannibal and Will and Matthew, all dead, all consuming one another, but Hannibal the only victim here, and fuck, but he can’t allow that to happen, either.

Not like this.

He takes the knife from where Matthew’s body still clutches at it and drags himself forward. The rug bunches below his body, damp and heavy with blood. The distance between them is insurmountable, an eternity, and every inch of it is red. His legs kick, spasm, but somehow he finds purchase. He surges forward another foot. He finds the dais.

Somehow, he gets to his feet, one arm tight across his abdomen. He doesn’t think his intestines are spilling through the gash, but the pain is growing distant now, his body heavier with every lurch forward. He mounts the altar steps. He stands before Hannibal Lecter, suspended from the heavens, twisting and fighting with a purpling face and bleeding wrists, vulgar stigmata.

Hannibal gazes back down at him. His thrashing slows. His lips shape words.

Is this what you want ?

Will, shaking and on the edge of consciousness, peels his arm from his wound, lance of Longinus long gone but leaving him open to the world, an exposed nerve, dying, dying. He can’t save himself, but he can wrap his arm around Hannibal and take the weight. Can push up, just enough to spare him from the noose.

He can’t see Hannibal’s eyes from this angle. The lack is as painful as the death in his belly. He jerks the knife up and up until it catches on the rope, and he slices. It bites into rough fiber, then goes no further.

Will presses his face into Hannibal’s chest, unable to look at what he’s doing, unable to witness his betrayal of himself. His hand continues to saw. The rope snaps, and snaps, and snaps again, and Hannibal’s weight grows heavier, heavier, and his breath in Will’s ear rasps and creaks and he doesn’t try to say anything, not now, or else Will can’t translate it through the motion of lips on scalp alone.

The last twist of fiber gives way. Hannibal descends upon him. Will can’t hold them both, not anymore, and they crash to the floor in a cascade of pain, the knife still clutched just behind Hannibal’s head.

Another chance. Another option. Kill him now, with honesty.

“The tape,” Hannibal breathes.

And Will cuts the tape instead.

The length of wood binding Hannibal’s arms rolls away, and Will’s head falls back, eyes closing. Their wounds are too deep. They can’t survive this. He should take these last few minutes he has and make of them a victory. Lay out every reason why Hannibal deserves this. Speak truth, at last, without coyness, without plausible deniability.

“I hate you,” Will whispers to the aether, to the body lying heavily atop his.

And Hannibal draws back. Will opens his eyes to watch him rise onto his knees, wrists pressed together as if that would be enough to staunch the bleeding. His gaze drops to Will’s stomach, to the ragged flesh visible through the rend in his jumpsuit.

Hannibal unfolds his arms. His hands settle over the wound in Will’s belly, pushing in, holding him together like he held together Abigail’s flayed throat. It means nothing. It means nothing.

Tears trace down his cheeks anyway, because he can see Hannibal reliving the same moment. They both are anchored to that moment, to that first bloody baptism. And Hannibal killed her anyway.

“Stay with me, Will,” Hannibal says.

“Why?” he answers, a laughing choking, dying in his throat. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around Hannibal’s neck, over the raw ridges left by the noose. “After everything you’ve done. Why should I?” 

“Because you don’t want to die.”

He should squeeze. He wants to squeeze. It would feel so good, to feel his flesh collapse, and it’s so much better than the knife, more intimate. “You,” Will rasps, unable to tighten his fist. “You did this to me. To us.”

Hannibal shakes his head, putting more pressure on Will’s wound even as that causes a new pulse of blood from his wrists. There can’t be enough left in either of them. “I only set the stage,” Hannibal says, and his voice is thick and hoarse, the legacy of the rope. “We are here because of you.” It is not an accusation, but Will can’t make sense of it. Hannibal’s lips have no color to them. His lungs heave with effort.

“And it’s beautiful,” Hannibal whispers.

Beautiful.

The word ramifies through his body. He stares up into Hannibal’s eyes, which glitter with reflections of holy objects, of mundane wooden pews. He can see the light through the cathedral windows now, as if it’s full daylight, shining down on the both of them.

They are beautiful, like this, connected by a blade, drowning in one another’s blood. It’s safe enough to see it now, to name it. Horrible, ugly, beautiful, necessary. All of it, vital.

Will’s hands slip from Hannibal’s throat, fall to his wrists, settle over the wounds he made in Hannibal’s forearms. They press tight, holding him together.

Hannibal’s forehead falls against Will’s.

“We can finally be honest,” Will says, “alone at the end of the world.”

“Not the end,” Hannibal says.

“Don’t lie to me.” He shakes his head. “We can’t survive, not like this.”

“Hold on to me,” Hannibal murmurs. He sags with exhaustion, the same way Will can’t manage to do anything but clutch at Hannibal’s arms. His head hangs lower. Their breath mingles.

“Beverly,” Will says. His mouth feels so dry, tongue swollen, cracking. They are desiccated, leached of life. “I sent her after you. You killed her. I killed her, too.” His chest jerks with an attempt at a sob that doesn’t manifest, can’t make it out past his lips. A confession that can only destroy. Can only lay waste. “How’s that for honesty?”

The world is fading. Hannibal’s hands are losing their grip on his belly. Will’s threaten to slip away entirely. It’s only gravity that holds them together, now.

“Abigail,” Hannibal says, and his words are slurred almost to the point of unrecognizability. 

“Don’t tell me you regret it,” Will says. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. No lies.”

Hannibal’s lips twitch. “Abigail,” he whispers, “is alive.” His eyelids flutter. His head falls against Will’s shoulder.

He doesn’t move again.

“Wait–” Will cries, and he tries to hold on, just a little longer. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait –”

But the world is slipping, and if a door opens somewhere at the end of the nave, if there is shouting, if there are familiar voices and a wash of flashing lights, he doesn’t know if any of it is real.