"Sharing the world with the one you love, the part of it that belongs to you no matter how small and insignificant you think it is. What is love, if not that. What is."
🔥 Soul and heart 🔥
His reflection in the plate in front of him, empty, filled with a mixture of guilt and acceptance that had been haunting him for days. Beside him Hannibal smiles, knowing himself as victorious as one who has pulled all the strings in another human being's life can be.
- What do you see, Will? - he asks, the amber colour of his eyes bright with excitement.
He has set the table with his best cutlery, the occasion well deserving. His suit, of course, dazzling, a reflection of what is to come.
- To me.
- Nothing else?
- Only uncertainty... and fear," Will replies.
He feels like hitting him, he knows he's to blame for this situation. He wants to knock him down on the table and make him see that in the loneliness of not knowing who he was, he had found himself. What he had discovered was beyond his control and, in turn, was his very essence.
- You must not be afraid, you know I have always been by your side.
The lake where he enjoyed a certain peace had disappeared. In its place, a raging sea: the boat, adrift, without oars, without a rudder. A strong piece of wood that had endured every swaying that had Hannibal's name on it. Just like the wind that carried it from one side to the other, just like the harbour in which it had docked. Hannibal occupied everything and in that everything Will had lost part of himself. Was it an important part, or a substitution?
- What will happen to my empathy? - he asks without knowing why.
- Didn't you feel every beat of his heart, mylimasis? His last sigh, his eyes pleading for the mercy you denied him?
Will nods, remembering. The blood on his hands, staining his clothes. The smell, fierce, flooding his nostrils. Hannibal beside him, proud of his creation, whispering words of a love that until then Will never thought was so deep.
- Close your eyes, my dear. I will guide your steps.
- As always, Hannibal. As always.
A light kiss on his cheek, unexpected, and Will blushes hoping Hannibal didn't see it. He notices the heat on his face and how his fingers run over his chin. How long Hannibal has waited for this he doesn't know, but the love in that touch says it's been longer than it should be.
- Open them," he says in his ear. The hunt belongs to you, and so does its soul.
Who he was was unimportant. His first victim, his prey. Will no longer lured, now he hunted. He smiles even though part of him feels as if it is no longer his and is lost forever.
- What is it, Hannibal?
- Some people think the soul resides in the brain. I, on the other hand, believe it lives in the heart. Human emotions are the basis of our survival, Will, and it is the heart that moves us to feel them.
One bite after another and Will says goodbye to what he once knew. Jack, Alana, his beloved Beverly. Molly...
- I couldn't love you more, Will Graham.
Will turns and grabs Hannibal by the collar of his shirt, kissing him. He lies on top of him on the table, leaving the remnants of blood that his heart still held in his mouth.
- Finish, Hannibal. I see in you what is now clear in me," he says, his hands unbuttoning his shirt.
- Beloved," he replies, embracing him, "my world has always been yours. Take it and do your will.
