This chapter continues and expands on the Uffizi Gallery scene (3.06). You might want to watch it first to get the vibe: https://youtu.be/r10TLw0azDA

remember

The soft scratching of a pencil on fine paper. Shadows had grown, and faces, bodies, arms and legs had taken form on the white sheet. No longer Achilles and Patroclus, but Zephyrus and Chloris, the God of the West Wind and the fleeing nymph, Will and Bedelia.

He sensed him before he saw him. He could recognize him by his steps alone, by smell, he could plainly feel the other's presence. As if they were two things that belonged to each other, with a connection so strong that it disregarded worldly rules. After months of separation, the nexus had just become more sensitive. Surely it would destroy them both, someday.

Hannibal's gaze followed him as he sat down next to him, near enough their shoulders and thighs almost touched. His eyes stayed on him, taking in every even so little detail of his features, as they bathed in each others closeness. Will exhaled audibly, tantamount to a sigh of relief. They were the only visitors that afternoon in this part of the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.

"If I saw you every day, forever, Will, I would remember this time."

In a room full of the world's most beautiful and significant works of art, still the only one he saw was Will.

A warm smile bloomed on Will's face, and their eyes met. "Strange seeing you here in front of me. Been staring at afterimages of you in places you haven't been in years." He broke their locked gazes, the smile long since faded. "I looked up at the night sky there. Orion above the horizon and, near it, Jupiter. I wondered if you could see it too. I wondered if our stars were the same."

"I believe some of our stars will always be the same. You entered the foyer of my mind and stumbled down the hall of my beginnings."

"I wanted to understand you before I laid eyes on you again. I needed it to be clear... what I was seeing." And as he dared to do so, he saw.

"Where does the difference between the past and the future come from?"

"Mine? Before you and after you." Aware of his words' weight and implication, his voice was barely more than a whisper. "Yours? It's all starting to blur. Mischa. Abigail. Chiyoh."

This time ist was Hannibal who averted his gaze.

They were no longer the same as they had been before. Even his voice wasn't the same anymore. A voice Will had heard so many times was now a completely different one. It was a grip on his heart, a storm in his arteries, a cold shiver that shot through his body, and an volatile sting in his abdomen. Everything had changed. What had been was no longer. Their ember, their heat, their fire had left nothing but a pile of ashes. They were no longer friends, no family. What would they be now? Would they ever be anything again?

"You and I have begun to blur."

Once named and enunciated, it was as if they could hear the bond between them whirring and buzzing. Will wasn't the only one whose boundaries wore away, whose borders and lines effaced. Hannibal knew it, he felt it.

"Isn't that how you found me?"

An instant long, they gazed upon the paintings without saying a word and lost themselves in the imagination that they would never have to wake up, that this would never end. A moment frozen in the middle of time. In the far distance a bird sang of the last hours of the day. The trees on the other side of Florence lost themselves in the light mist, just as they lost one another.

"Every crime of yours... feels like one I am guilty of. Not just Abigail's murder, every murder... stretching backward and forward in time."

Something washed over Hannibal's countenance, in his eyes something like sadness. "Freeing yourself from me and... me freeing myself from you, they are the same."

"We're conjoined", the syllables heavy in his mouth; there were more he didn't say. There had been a time, Hannibal and him, they could have been free together. "I'm curious whether either of us can survive separation."

Maybe even way earlier than Will, Hannibal had given that some thought and still wasn't sure of the answer. "Now is the hardest test, not letting rage and frustration... nor forgiveness keep you from thinking."

They lost themselves in the eyes of the other. His pupils widened as Will became aware of what Hannibal invited him to do. Then the latter shut his sketchbook. "Shall we?"

He was about to stand up, yet Will held him back: "The gallery doesn't close for another two hours. We still have time."

For a while, Will beheld the magnificent paintig in front of them, breathtaking in it's excellence and grandeur, permeated by craquelure like a fine web of time striding ahead; before his gaze wandered back to the man next to him, to his face, to the healing wounds. He reached out to him until his fingertips almost touched his skin. "Jack did this to you?", more a conclusion than a question. Hannibal nodded. One glance at his hands and Will knew: "You didn't fight back."

The silence between them wasn't empty but full of unspoken words and memories, wistfulness and poignancy. Again, it was Will who broke it: "I wasn't there to fight you either. I didn't come to your house to detain you or take your life."

"You brought your gun."

"To protect you from Jack. I had chosen you, I wanted to run away with you, even as I still thought you had killed Abigail... Just for you to take her away again. And this time you made me watch." A sea of blood, and he couldn't even drown. "You've been angry at me, and... disappointed. You should have killed me, not... not her."

"What happened to Abigail had to happen." Ties had had to be cut like a girl's throat. Abigail had been a bridge, a bridge to Will, that he had had to burn down. So Will had been able to live. "There was no other way."

He should have known that Will didn't need bridges, that not even an ocean between them was far enough.

"There was. But there isn't now." Will swollowed down his tears. "I still dream about Abigail. I dream that I'm... teaching her how to fish."

"I'm sorry... I took that from you." He saw Will's loss like he saw his own; there had been many, maybe too many. So he looked away to restrain the flood. "I wish I could give it back."

"So do I", his voice broke like the dam that had held back his tears. He had never expected to hear those words from Hannibal, and yet: "I don't want your apology", Will faltered, "because there is nothing it could be good for."

It must have been moments like this that changed you forever. Hannibal closed his eyes and fell. Fell with the hope he had been holding onto. Will was right, an apology wouldn't change anything, wouldn't make amends. There was nothing left he could do, nothing more he could say. It was too late. He had destroyed everything, and he would keep on doing so. Mentally Hannibal tried to say goodbye to him, but it didn't work.

"Will you forgive me?"

"I already did. But how could I forget?"

Hannibal looked down at the marble floor and remained silent. Perhaps it was still too early to be able to accept his forgiveness. Or already too late. There were things Will needed to say out loud, and Hannibal let him.

"The moment I was ready to... I was fully ready to be with you, with all its consequences..., you shattered me. And her. I don't care what you did to me. I just don't care anymore what happens to me. But... everytime I look at you... I see her." Again, he reached out to him, and stopped before he crossed the line, before his hand could touch Hannibal's. "How could I forget that these hands have snuffed out her light?"

"I will make you forget."

Mindful, as if the younger man could slip away from him if he made a careless movement, Hannibal advisedly placed a hand on Will's. To both of their surprise, Will didn't pull it away, didn't back away, didn't withdraw from him; instead he closed his eyes, and let himself be held by a single firm touch. They were just sitting there, next to each other. Fragile. Vulnerable. Sensitive. It was far too much and, at the same time, far too little. They kept silent. Neither of them dared to disrupt this breakable moment. It wasn't an empty silence. The space between them was crammed with longing and poignant memory, dismay and shallow breathing.

"Abigail deserves to be remembered."

"I will remember her for both of us. Just as I will remember you."

"If I saw you every day, forever, Will, I would remember this time."

Hannibal 3.06

"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

sources & recommendations:

• scene 2.11: Will and Hannibal discuss Abigail's death https://youtu.be/jrXeAI2aaSY
• scene 3.06: Will and Hannibal in the Uffizi Gallery https://youtu.be/r10TLw0azDA
• chapter 9 "The burden of guilt" in my Supernatural-Destiel-Fanfic "Cursed or not" https://belletristica.com/de/books/52335-cursed-or-not/chapter/294406-a-case-in-salem
• painting "Primavera" by Sandro Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/botticelli-spring