There Was No Darkness, Only You ( Hannibal x Will )

1

The world began to spin around me as if it never existed in the first place. An illusion that was only kept consistent by the firm anchoring of my feet against the ground.

As the illusion of Earth warped and twisted around me, the only thing that was real was Hannibal in my arms. His hands pressed firmly into my back, his fingers grasping at my hair. My face burrowed into his shoulder as I held him just as tightly, fearing that the last real thing on Earth would slip through my fingers.

When your heart is racing faster than your mind, and your body becomes little more than air between the two of them, the truths that you've burried deep beneath you float to the surface. In this moment, where my heart seemed to intermingle with Hannibal's, the ugliest truth came to light- a truth that I had known and hidden for a long time. One that had compelled me to tear and rip at the Dragon's flesh until his life stained my hands, that had driven me off of this cliff with Hannibal Lecter in my arms.

'I love you.'

The thought came to me, screaming repetitively in my skull, a desperate last cry before the end of my life. I couldn't tell if my lips moved, and if they did, I couldn't be sure any audible words could be heard above the howling of the wind tearing past us.

One last 'I love you', before we hit the water.

The impact was enough to drive all breath from my body. Pain bloomed across my body all at once, like pigment dropped into water, turning it red in an instant.

Yet as cold surrounded me, as everything slipped past me like a mirage, I could hear the subtle pounding of my heart in my chest.

I was alive.

The realization wrenched at me so suddenly it gave me whiplash. My fingers dug to keep a hold on the world around me, as I suddenly felt the need to anchor myself. I couldn't let my life slip by, not now that It was given back to me.

I opened my eyes, and grabbed at Hannibal so furiously that I was reaching into his flesh itself in a desperate attempt to keep him close to me. The water all about us was dark, scarlet clouds billowing about us as we sunk, the water growing colder and more oprresive. When he was suspended underwater, Hannibal looked almost angelic, his eyes closed, his hair billowing about him in untamed golden waves of light, forming a halo about his face. I stared into his face and my heart twisted itself into knots as I waited, hoping desperately that his eyes would open, too.

They did not.

I cried out his name and water filled my lungs, and in one last feeble attempt at tenderness, My hand found his own and squeezed.

We were sinking, and I was ready to let darkness envelop us whole, until I felt his hand squeeze back.

There is an instinctual phenomenon that has been noted in mothers when their child is in danger. At the threat of losing their child, they are able to surpass their human capabilities and overcome adversaries much stronger than themselves.

Something not dissimilar seized me then- except it was far from paternal. It was the fact that someone, who meant much more to me than I did to myself, was about to slip away from me.

I cannot fathom the strength that possessed me in that moment. My body was broken beyond belief, my life bleeding out into the water around me. My lungs were constricting around sea water in a feeble attempt to get a breath of air. Hannibal was heavy and limp in my arms, dragging me down like an anchor to the seafloor. Yet I pervailed.

Something animal came over me, and thrashing blindly in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, my head broke the water. God himself must've reached down in that moment and dragged me up to the surface, becuase despite the entire world trying to drag us back down into the water, we floated above it all.

I'm not sure how much time passed between that moment and the moment when I woke up. Stone lay cold underneath my face, and water rolled weakly about me, in and out like a current. The unbearable shaking that reached into my bones came first, and then I evicted all of the water from my lungs with a horrible retch that raked against the walls of my throat. I gasped in the fresh, cool air and it stung like ice against my lungs. Sputtering and gasping, I drew myself forwards on my elbows, dragging myself out of the shore and onto the beach.

"Hannibal?" I croaked and my voice belonged not to me, but to a dead man. I weakly looked around, but my vision was covered in a film. My contacts must've fallen out in the water.

I called his name again, and again, and again, but there was no answer. With each passing moment of silence, my body came back to life and was filled with anxiety. I scrambled to my knees, my weak body trembling with the exertion, slipping on the wet stones of the beach. I turned back to face the water, and found him lying there, washed up at the very edge of the blue, spanning horizon. When I came to his side, he was not breathing- but his heart beat in his throat faintly beneath my fingers. I pulled him to sit up with his back against my chest and desperately attempted the heimlich manuever. After three unbearable minutes of frantic beats in and out, Hannibal's body jerked to life, as he coughed out water and sucked in deep, pained breaths of air.

Exauhsted, I flopped onto my back, and Hannibal fell back onto me, his head laying on my chest as he wheezed.

The world was still and nonexistent around us. It felt as if the only life in the world was the one shared between me and Hannibal, as I felt the wet fabric of his coat laying heavy against my chest, felt his stomach rise and fall with breath. An Imperturbable feeling settled across me as the loudness of the world died and went silent.

"Did you mean it?" Hannibal's voice was almost inaudible when it shattered the silence. His voice was rough and strained and broken, as if he had been dead and was ressurected.

My heart disquieted the stillness inside of me as the burning roar of my own existence filled my ears. My whole body seared with hotness as I recalled my last words. words that had fallen from their grace, tumbling out of my mouth, one final decleration to the world. A decleration strong enough to defeat the wind itself in all it's fury.

My hands snaked around Hannibal's midsection, as my palm rested itself right above his beating heart in his chest.

"Yes."