Chapter 1: Overture- A sweet melody
Hannibal roamed through the chambers of his memory palace. He walked through the corridors, his steps echoing of the marble floor, his fingertips stroking along the walls.
His palace was beautiful, elaborate, like everything that he loved and decorated with as much detail as the houses he possessed in real life.
The doctor slowly strode through a cathedral-like room that was filled with piles of books from floor to ceiling.
He felt numb, devoid of emotion.
He had been missing a part of his life for too long. He had wanted to test Will, to prove if he was worthy of his attention, his love. But now he felt like this test had required too much from both of them.
In the process, he had not only lost the person who was dearest to him, but also a daughter.
Since Will had been apart from him, Hannibal had spent a great amount of his time here, in his palace. He had neither been able to go to the opera or to throw a dinner party and socialize with Baltimore's elite like he usually loved to do.
No, instead he had been thinking about ways to unmake what he did and to free Will from prison. It was the only way to get him back- and to fix him. Hannibal had heard that Will's encephalitis was still not fully cured and he worried for his friend, who was, like Hannibal, caught up in his own world right now.
Something close to the floor caught Hannibal's eye. Kneeling down he recognized a photo sticking out of a book. He picked it up, wiped the dust off it and read the title: The tale of Achilles and Patroclus was written in golden letters on the binding.
He carefully pulled out the photo and a sad smile immediately curved his lip. The picture had been taken just after he had been attacked by Tobias Budge, a friend of one of his patients, who had turned out to be a dangerous psychopath.
Hannibal had taken care of this rude person-in self-defense, of course-but the FBI had insisted on taking photographs of the crime scene. And looking through them the doctor had stumbled across a real treasure: Will had shown up after Hannibal had sent him to the psychopath's lure and rushed to his psychiatrist's side to make sure he was all right. Hannibal could still remember how relieved he had been that Will was still alive, that he had passed the first test. And he could recall seeing the same emotion reflected in Will's eyes. They had just sat there for a long time and locked eyes.
The photo showed Hannibal, a little more rumpled and bloody than usual, sitting behind his desk while the younger profiler crouched on the wooden surface with an adorable smile on his lips, both seeming unable to turn their gazes away from the other.
Hannibal sighed heavily, a small, dangerous smile playing around his mouth.
A sweet, eerie melody began to play somewhere in the darkness of his palace. Following the sound, he preceded further into the lingering shadows to wake the monster sleeping in one of the chambers.
He would get Will out of this prison; he would be free and by his side again. They would be reunited. He would make sure of it.
