They fell together. The wind ripped at them as they went over the edge, sea and sky blurring into one violent blur. Hannibal’s hand gripped Will’s coat, but gravity didn’t care about their grip—it pulled them both down into the roar and cold.

When Will woke, there was no sound. Just the ache in his throat and the taste of salt in his mouth. The crash of the ocean was there, but distant—muted, wrong. He tried to call out, but only air came out. His chest shook, his lips moved, but his voice was gone. The effort made his vision spark and his stomach twist.

Hannibal lived. That was the first thing Will saw when his eyes focused again—Hannibal sitting against a rock, bleeding from the head but still breathing, still watching him. Always watching him. Later, when they’d dragged themselves away from the cliff and found shelter in a forgotten cottage at the edge of the woods, Hannibal spoke for both of them.

He tried to speak. Tried to ask, Are we alive? Tried to curse him, to thank him, to say anything that might make sense of it. But the sound snagged on something torn. His throat convulsed, dry and useless. Pain shot up his neck. No sound followed. Just air, trembling and thin.

Hannibal’s gaze shifted, something unreadable darkening behind his calm. His hand reached out, brushed Will’s throat, gentle and knowing. There was no triumph there, no pride. Only recognition. “Shh,” he murmured, voice hoarse from blood and seawater. “You don’t need to.”

But Will did. The silence that followed felt heavier than the sea.

Days blurred together after that. They found shelter—a ruined house, half-eaten by ivy and wind, far enough from the world that no one would ever find them. The air smelled of damp stone and decay. The windows looked out toward the coast where the waves still struck the cliff, relentless and cold. Hannibal moved through the space with quiet purpose, tending to wounds, cleaning what little food he could find, watching Will as though afraid he might vanish if left unattended.

Will tried to communicate. He scribbled on paper when his hands were steady enough. We should move. Someone might come. Why did you save me? His handwriting shook, his thoughts barely coherent, but Hannibal always read them as if they were scripture. Sometimes he answered aloud, sometimes not at all. Sometimes his hand lingered too long on the words, eyes heavy with a grief Will didn’t believe him capable of.

When the bleeding stopped and the bruises turned yellow, the silence began to stretch. Will sat by the window most nights, watching the dark roll in over the sea. He had never realized how much of himself lived in sound—the soft cadence of his voice, the way words filled the air, even the smallest mutter that grounded him in his own mind. Now, without it, the world felt stripped. Thoughts clawed the inside of his skull with nowhere to go.

Hannibal filled the void with small domestic rituals. He spoke gently when he did at all, never asking for responses, never forcing speech that couldn’t come. He brewed tea. He cooked, quietly, as if the rhythm of the knife and the simmering pot were conversation enough. Sometimes he hummed, barely audible—fragments of melodies that hung unfinished in the air. It was the only sound that didn’t make Will flinch.

But when Hannibal hummed, Will remembered. He remembered the kitchen in Baltimore, the scent of wine, the first time he’d felt the weight of the man’s attention. He remembered the nights he’d wanted to end it, and the nights he hadn’t. Now the music felt cruel. A reminder of a time when words could still wound and mend and matter.