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He walks for many miles before the first notes reach him. Endless desert stretches out from him in dunes and valleys. Sand dances across the ground on the wind. The sun burns down on his neck, and he can’t stop thinking I wish I’d brought some lotion, even though he knows he couldn’t bring anything to this place—not even himself. Something had brought him here on its own.
But finally, the notes: Tones carried on the wind, perhaps arranged, perhaps random, but notes all the same. He wonders if they could come from a piano, or maybe a harpsichord. He’s been in this desert long enough that the thought doesn’t seem outlandish to him. The sun addles his mind.
He tests the wind’s direction and adjusts his path toward its source—toward whatever is producing the beautiful notes.
He climbs a tall dune, scrabbling his way up its gritty surface, sometimes snatching nothing but sand and sliding back down again. He finally reaches the top, and what he sees steals his breath away. His lungs don’t cry out, even as he ceases to breathe altogether. Maybe he never needed to breathe here in the first place.
An ocean spreads before him. He falls to his knees. It’s been so long since he’s seen water, and to see so much of it all at once? It overwhelms him.
And still he hears the notes. He searches the coastline for their source. His eyes settle on something stark white that stands out even against the clean ivory sand. He stumbles forward, down the other side of the dune, slipping and sliding until he sets foot on the beach.
The notes increase in volume as he nears the white thing. Soon he sees it for what it is: A grand piano rests on the beach, at the border between sand and water. It should be absurd, but he doesn’t feel it to be.
He moves closer still, and the notes reveal themselves fully. They’re delicate and cautious—as if the pianist is exploring the instrument for the first time—but still fully formed into a melody.
He listens to the music for a while and feels out its intricacies. It’s playful one moment, melancholy the next, ever changing but never anything less than gorgeous. The desire to know who could produce a sound like that overwhelms him. He rounds the instrument to find a simple pianist sitting on the bench. Even with his messy hair and stubbled cheeks, he thinks the pianist must be at least as beautiful as the music he creates.
Without looking up or ceasing his playing, the pianist asks, “Who are you?”
For a moment he can’t remember his name. He thinks, If I can’t remember where I came from, how can I remember my name? But as he looks at the pianist, something about him stimulates his memory. He’s sure he’s seen him before somewhere else—or maybe sometime else. The scrap of a memory makes his mind tick along more rapidly than the sun had allowed it to, and after a period of unbroken music, he opens his mouth and says, “Hannibal. My name is Hannibal Lecter.”
“Funny,” says the pianist, “I knew a Hannibal Lecter once. He looked just like you.”
“Perhaps we’re one and the same,” Hannibal says.
“Maybe,” the pianist returns. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m not quite sure. It feels like years, but I haven’t had a drop to drink.”
“Don’t drink the seawater,” the pianist says, tickling the keys at one end. “You’ll die in there. Death isn’t fun for anyone.”
“I take it that means I’m alive?”
The pianist nods and goes on playing.
“May I ask your name as well?”
“You can, but I won’t answer,” the pianist says. “Even if I do, will it actually affect the past? None of us can change what’s been done.”
“What do you mean by what’s been done?”
“The rocks were sharp,” the pianist continues, “but the Hannibal Lecter I knew—the one from another place—found a way around them.”
“So you only speak in riddles.”
“Not riddles,” the pianist says. “Memories.”
Hannibal strokes his cheek in thought. “Memories of the other place?”
“Something like that. Now I’ll ask you a question: Do you remember the wine bottle?” The pianist looks at Hannibal expectantly.
Hannibal shakes his head. “Not one in particular.”
“He shattered it,” the pianist says. “And after that, the rocks.”
“Why won’t you tell me your name?” Hannibal asks. “I don’t like being at a disadvantage.”
“You need to know it so badly?”
“I do.”
The pianist goes on a particularly emotive flourish before answering, “Will Graham.”
The ticks in Hannibal’s mind gain speed along with his quickening heartbeat. He pales. “You’re… You’re Will. How could I have forgotten your face? What are you doing here, Will?”
“Not the same thing you’re doing here, if you’re wondering. Maybe think about that a little. And where is here? Those are better questions to ask, and I think you know the answers to them. At least, the Hannibal Lecter from another place would know the answers. He always had the answers. Always knew…” Will stops playing for a moment. A tear drips from his cheek onto one of the keys. He swipes it away and continues his melody. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“More riddles?”
Will shakes his head and lifts the bottom of his shirt with his left hand—his right still playing—exposing a grisly wound. A shard of rock juts through his side. It should be bleeding, but it isn’t. So many things should be but aren’t in this place.
“That looks…” Hannibal trails off, and his mind ticks quickly enough to remind him that he’s a surgeon. “That rock pierced organs and severed arteries. How are you still alive?”
“I already told you,” Will says. “Death isn’t fun for anyone.” He stops playing and turns to Hannibal. The silence is devastating. “If you are the Hannibal Lecter I used to know, then you’re not meant to be here.”
Hannibal feels sick. Somehow he hadn’t noticed before, but Will is covered in blood. As his mind ticks, he remembers—he remembers. In a rush he remembers his deepest feelings for the man seated before him. His most intense love for him. “God, Will! I’m sorry, I’d forgotten everything… I’d even forgotten about you, and us…”
“Us? Then you actually are the other Hannibal?” Will shakes his head. “This place really isn’t for you.”
“Who is it for, then?”
“For me,” Will says. He closes the cover on the piano. “But I don’t have much longer here, either. There’s not enough time for you to search your mind before I move on.”
“Then give me the answers.”
“All right. This place is for the dead,” Will says. He stands up from the bench. “And the Hannibal Lecter I knew is very much alive.”
Fear creeps into Hannibal’s gut. “If this place is for the dead, then you’re saying you’re…” He can’t bring himself to finish.
“Yes, I am,” Will says. “The sequence is clear, isn’t it? A dragon shattered the bottle, and the rocks shattered me. That’s all.” He pauses. “I am glad I got to see you one more time.”
“It won’t just be once. If you’re dead, then let death take me as well. Tell me, and I’ll do anything.”
Will looks at him and smiles. He’s not crying anymore. He leans up on his toes to kiss Hannibal’s lips. Their first kiss. He settles back onto his feet and says, “I appreciate your passion for me. I really do. But there’s nothing to be done now.” He scan’s Hannibal’s features. “Do you know what I meant when I said it was beautiful?”
“The killing. It was about the killing.”
Will shakes his head. “No. It was us.” He kisses Hannibal again. It’s only their second kiss, yet it’s the last they’ll ever share. Will turns toward the ocean. “I’m leaving now,” he says. “You should, too.”
“I can’t leave you,” Hannibal says. “Isn’t this… Shouldn’t something happen first? Shouldn’t there be a moment?”
“Something like trading I love yous?” Will asks, sounding amused. “That was never who we were. But we were beautiful. So go. Be the Hannibal Lecter from the other place, like you’re supposed to be. I’ll be the Will Graham from a new place.” He begins to walk into the sea. When he’s ankle deep, he stops for a moment to say, “Goodbye, Hannibal. When you think about us later, know that I believe it was all worth it.”
“You can’t—“
Hannibal’s cry is cut short. His vision blackens, he feels a falling sensation, then a sickening thud. He hears waves crashing around him. When he opens his eyes, he’s at the bottom of a cliff. The cliff by the glass house. The cliff where they’d slain the dragon.
He turns his head. Will is there, too.
He’s not moving.
Hannibal moans. He ignores his pain and drags himself over to the body. Will’s eyes stare skyward, unblinking. Blood trails from his half-open mouth and the wound in his cheek.
Hannibal knows he’s to blame for this. If he hadn’t been so curious from the start, they never would’ve fallen for each other, and Will might still be alive. Hannibal might be dead in his place. That would be right. That would be just.
But he can’t change the past, and it’s all led up to this moment: Crying over his Will, crushed and broken, dead on the rocks below the cliff.