"Ouroboros is a mythological symbol originating from ancient Egypt. A coiled serpent consuming its own tail, it represents the continuous cycle of life and death."
Hannibal speaks as if reciting from an invisible script. Will imagined that it would be unfurled parchment, the ink glistening red like spiders in the endless cascade of eloquence.
He could visualize the flash of scales, the gaping mouth dripping venom as it clamped over what could be tenderly wrapped flesh. Devourment at its grandest.
Will's lips quirked into a morbid smile. "In order to keep living, you must keep dying."
It sounded like assent, but wasn't. Hannibal glanced at Will as the comment pricked at his skin.
Will continued, his steps resounding through the art exhibit, swallowed up by the jet-black paint soaking every surface. "I have died for you, Hannibal. I have killed for you. And, I have lived for you." His tone was thoughtful, but something fragile trembled in the carefully-formed words—something begging to be broken.
Hannibal had no response to these truths. Will had indeed died for him, in an antler room, on a beach lashed with salt, on a stage framed by richly colored curtains.
And Will had killed for him, the beauty of the aftermath staggering, warping into synchrony and alibis. Will had killed every past version of himself, with his hands, intimately, to step further into Hannibal's dark orbit. He'd looked into the red-rimmed, watering, bloodshot, hollow eyes of the profiler, the empath, the suspicious investigator, the despairing, disenchanted boy. And he'd ended their suffering, whispering each farewell like a prayer.
Hannibal had resurrected Will, with all his darkness on full display instead of merely shining through the cracks in his porcelain skin.
"And yet…" he stopped beneath a contraption of artfully melded metal and wood, each bent shape giving the impression that they were trying to break themselves apart. One piece melted, another burned, and so on, in a deadly tangle—no distinct separation.
You bond with your captor, you survive. If you don't, you're breakfast.
"And yet?" Hannibal prompted, unable to resist. His eyes drank in the sight of curly-haired Will drenched in a spotlight's illumination, his unbuttoned shirt, and the swooping lines making up a tired but defiant figure.
Even now, he was at war with himself, debating whether to engage or detach. He'd already let too much slip. It was Hannibal's turn to advance.
Will made no acknowledgment of the nearing presence, a layer of concealment over his eyes, offering Hannibal no view through the windows of his soul. Hannibal suspected that there was merely a shell of it left.
I have died for you, killed for you, lived for you. I have been the serpent consuming its tail. And yet, "I don't know you," Will says quietly but firmly, the words themselves a sudden revelation.
There were rooms in Hannibal Lecter's memory palace that no soul had tread in, and none ever would. Keys tangled with the strings their owners pulled with threadbare fingers, doors barred. Will walked the desolate halls with questions bubbling up his throat, knowing the answers lay under the most exquisite of traps.
Hannibal briefly closes his eyes. The lingering of Will's confession hurt more than a scalpel's twist.
With the snap of a branch, a fraction of his restraint dissolves. "You know me, Will," he tells his companion like a secret.
Another smile, wry this time. Will is close enough to strike, to reach out and touch, but wholly distant under a frame of wood and metal. His eyes are unyielding, glaciers of regret. "Do I?"
Hannibal draws in a breath and traps it within his chest. He holds it, counting dutifully, the numbers leaving his mind like smoke. The next words tumble out as entrails, unable to take back.
"Better than you know yourself, my Achilles heel."