from heaven to earth to hell
pairing: hannibal lecter x fallen!angel!reader
genre: horror • angst
notes: winner of my recent poll!, you are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time...
as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal...
warning: Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury
MINORS DNI!!
masterlist
join my taglist
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
part 1
Snow had already begun to swallow the sound of the world when you fell.
The impact had not been graceful.
Angels were not meant to fall.
Your body struck the frozen earth like something that had been violently torn from the sky. Bone shuddered beneath your skin. Your wings collapsed beneath you in a tangle of white and darkened feathers.
For a long moment, you could not breathe.
Then sensation returned.
Cold like knives sliding beneath your skin.
Pain followed, sharp, invasive, everywhere at once. Every nerve that Heaven had once quieted awakened with brutal enthusiasm.
Your lungs burned with the effort of air.
Your heart pounded wildly.
You had never felt your own body like this before.
You lay in the snow beneath towering fir trees.
The clouds swallowed the stars above you.
The forest seemed endless.
For the first time since your creation…
You were alone.
Your fingers twitched against the frozen ground.
Slowly, painfully, you forced yourself upright.
Your wings dragged heavily behind you as you staggered forward.
They were enormous, nearly three meters from root to tip, but now they felt wrong on your body, like broken limbs that refused to obey you. Feathers scraped against ice and mud, leaving trails in the snow behind you.
Your halo no longer floated above your head.
It sat in your hands.
Cracked.
Dim.
You walked.
You did not know how long.
Time felt different now.
Hours passed or perhaps only minutes.
The forest eventually thinned until the dark line of a road appeared beneath your bare feet.
Streetlamps flickered weakly through falling snow.
Your wings scraped along the pavement.
Your skin trembled violently with cold.
Your breath came in small, ragged clouds.
Your gaze lifted.
And you saw a house.
Two stories of dark brick.
Every window glowed softly from within.
It stood apart from the other homes.
Beautiful.
Wrong.
The moment you looked at it, something deep inside your ruined grace stirred.
You walked toward it anyway.
Like a wounded bird returning to an unfamiliar nest.
By the time you reached the garden, your legs trembled so violently you nearly collapsed.
Your wings dragged through the snow behind you, feathers dirty and heavy.
You stopped beneath one of the windows.
Inside, warm golden light flickered.
You should have left.
You knew you should have left.
But instead, you stood there in the darkness, staring through the glass.
A man moved within the room.
Tall.
Precise.
Composed in a way that made your chest tighten with something unfamiliar.
He poured himself a glass of deep red wine.
Your breath fogged against the glass.
You couldn't look away.
Then…
His head lifted.
Slowly.
As if he had heard something that did not exist.
His eyes found yours through the frost-covered window.
And he did not flinch.
Your fingers tightened around your broken halo.
Inside the house, the man placed his glass down. His movements were unhurried, almost graceful as he approached the window.
When he stood before you, the light revealed his face clearly.
Calm.
Thoughtful.
And something darker, buried very deep behind his eyes.
Without breaking eye contact he opened the window.
Cold air slipped between you.
For a long moment, neither of you spoke.
You felt your heart hammering painfully inside your chest.
The sound alone felt overwhelming.
Angels were not meant to hear their own hearts.
Then, quietly, you spoke.
“Hannibal… Lecter.”
The name left your mouth like instinct.
Angels knew such things, and even if divinity was slipping from you, it stuck out to you.
His soul was…
Rotten.
Beautifully rotten.
A slow blink passed over his dark eyes.
He studied you with unsettling patience.
You watched him.
“You speak my name,” he said softly.
His voice was velvet, soft soothing against your trembling form.
“And yet… we have never met.”
His gaze drifted down your wings, massive things now dragged through dirt and blood-streaked snow.
“Are you lost?”
You nodded slowly.
The movement felt heavy.
“I am.”
Your voice sounded smaller than you remembered it ever being.
Your fingers tightened unconsciously around the halo.
“I cannot go home.”
The words felt like glass inside your throat.
A faint crack echoed through the halo in your hands.
You gasped softly.
Another fracture had split across the halo’s surface.
You held it closer to your chest immediately, as if your pure warmth might heal it.
“I am far from it.”
For a moment, Hannibal said nothing.
His gaze lowered to the broken ring.
Then his eyes returned to you, curious in a way.
“You fell from Heaven?”
Your answer came instantly.
“No.”
Too quickly.
Too defensive.
You turned away from him before he could ask anything more.
Your legs finally gave out beneath you as you stepped further into the garden. The cold grass bit through your skin as you collapsed into the snow.
Your wings shifted weakly.
One of them unfolded partially, feathers scattering into the white ground beneath you. Some were stained with blood from the violence of your fall.
With a tired motion, you pulled the wing over your body like a blanket.
Your breathing slowed.
Below you, the snow welcomed you into its cold embrace.
Above you, the night continued to fall.
Hannibal stood at the window watching.
For several seconds, he did not move.
An angel.
Collapsed in his garden like a dying bird.
He felt no pity.
But fascination.
That bloomed immediately.
The surgeon in him saw injury.
The artist saw ruin.
And something darker wondered what an angel might taste like.
He left the window.
Moments later, the back door opened.
Cold air rushed inside as Hannibal stepped out into the snow, coat hastily thrown over his shoulders.
His footsteps were quiet as he approached you.
His voice was soft.
Almost gentle.
As he towered above you.
“You’re freezing.”
Your eyes peeked over the edge of your wing.
The feathers trembled slightly with every shallow breath you take.
You watched him.
“No,” you whispered again.
Your voice was weaker now.
Thinner.
As if the cold is slowly stealing pieces of it.
Angels were never meant to shiver.
Angels were never meant to feel the cold gnawing into bone.
But your body trembled anyway as your divinity left you, too far from home.
With a quiet, pained gasp, you dragged your wing fully over yourself again, burying your body beneath the damaged feathers like a wounded creature hiding in its own plumage.
Your breath stuttered.
The torn flesh in your wing stretched and sent pain right through you.
Hannibal saw it now.
The rip.
A thin but unmistakable tear through the soft layers of feathers.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Fascinating.
You claim not to feel the cold.
Yet pain…
Pain speaks a language every creature understands.
Without asking, he reached toward you.
Slowly.
Two long fingers hovered beside the wound, careful not to touch the torn skin just yet. He pressed gently into the surrounding feathers instead.
You flinched instantly.
Your wing snapped close with a rustle of feathers, hiding the wound.
“Don’t– touch me.” you hissed.
A wounded animal’s warning.
Hannibal withdrew his hand at once.
Not offended or irritated.
Only… observing.
Interesting.
“The wound requires cleaning.”
His gaze flicks briefly toward the warm glow of the house behind him before returning to your dark, wary eyes.
You shake your head immediately.
“It doesn’t…”
Your voice cracked slightly as you clung to the last bit of hope that your divinity was not lost.
Angels healed.
You always healed.
Before Heaven took everything from you.
Your body curled tighter against itself as another wave of pain rolled through you. With every passing second, the strange heaviness of your human flesh became more apparent.
Your heart was too loud.
Your lungs burned.
Your muscles ached.
Pain was no longer something you merely understood.
Now it lived inside you.
You gasped softly.
A small whimper escaped your throat before you could stop it.
You tried so desperately to push yourself upright, but your arms trembled violently beneath your weight.
Your wings twitched uselessly behind you.
Nothing about this body obeyed you the way it should.
Hannibal saw it.
The failed movement.
The awkward struggle.
Angels, he had always imagined, would move like poetry.
You moved like something broken.
Something that had forgotten how its own body works.
A living thing whose flesh was betraying it.
He made a decision.
Before you coil protest again, he slid one arm carefully beneath your shoulders and another behind your knees.
Then he lifted you, almost effortlessly.
If it weren’t for the wings.
They were heavy.
Shockingly heavy.
The weight nearly equal to your own body.
You did not fight him this time.
Fear flickered in your chest, but something else rose beside it.
Something strange.
Something almost familiar.
Your halo pulsed faintly in your trembling hands.
The light was weaker now.
Dim.
Fading.
You clutched it tighter against your feather-covered chest as a small sob caught in your throat.
“Please… no…”
Hannibal paused, not because you resisted him.
Because of that.
The plea.
His eyes lowered to the object you cradled so desperately.
The halo.
Its glow flickering like a dying star.
He studied your face.
Tears clinging to your lashes.
Your lips trembled.
Angels cry.
Apparently.
“What is happening to it?”
You pressed the ring harder against yourself. As if you could push it back into your soul.
“I’m dying,” you whispered, even if it wasn’t entirely true.
But it is the closest word your mind could find.
Angels were not meant to feel like this.
The pounding heart.
The aching muscles.
The unbearable weight of sensation flooding every nerve.
You had once felt human pain only through empathy.
Now it belonged to you.
And it was unbearable.
Hannibal exhaled softly.
You were not dying.
Not yet.
He carried you through the open door of the house.
The heat from the fireplace made your body shudder harder due to the sudden contrast.
Carefully, almost delicately, Hannibal lowered you onto a plush couch near the fire.
Your wings spilled across the cushions, feathers scattered softly across the dark fabric.
from heaven to earth to hell
pairing: hannibal lecter x fallen!angel!reader
genre: horror • angst
notes: winner of my recent poll!, you are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time... as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal...
warning: Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury, SMUT!, masturbation (m)
MINORS DNI!!
masterlist
join my taglist
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
part 6
Will arrived earlier than usual that afternoon.
The snow outside had worsened overnight, thick white gathering along the windowsills of Hannibal’s office until the world beyond looked distant and drowned. The room itself remained warm, dimly lit, meticulously arranged down to the angle of the books on the shelves.
Nothing in Hannibal’s life ever seemed accidental.
Will sat across from him in the leather chair.
“You’re preoccupied.” Hannibal observed calmly, noting the tension in Will immediately.
Will leaned back slightly, rubbing tired fingers over his mouth before exhaling through his nose. “You brought an angel into your house,” he said flatly. “I think that qualifies as… distracting.”
A faint smile ghosted across Hannibal’s face at that.
“Does it trouble you?”
Will looked toward the window instead of answering directly. His reflection stared back at him faintly through the snow-fogged glass.
“They… don't make sense,” he admitted quietly. “Not really.”
Hannibal handed him a cup of tea.
“Most living things do not,” he replied.
Will accepted the cup but didn’t drink from it. His thoughts were elsewhere.
“They said being human hurts,” Will murmured after a pause. “Like they’d never experienced sensation before. Hunger. Cold. Fatigue.” His brow furrowed slightly. “They talked about it like it was… horrifying.”
“It is horrifying.” Hannibal said mildly.
Will looked up at him.
Hannibal sat elegantly in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, perfectly composed as always.
“To suddenly become aware of the body is to become aware of suffering,” he continued. “Every heartbeat becomes a countdown. Every pleasure becomes temporary. Humans simply grow accustomed to it early.”
Will stared down into the untouched tea.
“They know… things,” he said slowly. “You can tell. The way they talk… they understand concepts, history, the world… in a way. But at the same time they act like a child seeing snow for the first time.”
Hannibal nodded once.
“It is educated,” he said. “But not experienced. There is a difference.”
He leaned back slightly, fingers resting together.
“It understands the idea of pain. Sin. Desire. Death. Angels observe humanity endlessly. They study it.” His eyes darkened slightly with thought. “But observation is not the same as participation.”
Will was quiet.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now,” Hannibal said softly, “it participates.”
Something about the way he said it made Will uneasy.
“They are vulnerable,” Will muttered.
“Yes.”
The answer came too easily.
Will’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You say that like it interests you.”
Hannibal’s mouth curved faintly.
“Everything vulnerable interests me.”
Silence settled briefly between them.
Will thought again of your wings trembling under his fingertips.
The way you had hidden behind them.
The way you had spoken about God not loving you anymore.
“What happens to someone like that?” Will asked finally. “Someone who suddenly has to feel everything?”
Hannibal’s gaze lingered on him.
“They adapt,” he said. “Or they break.”
Will’s jaw tightened.
At that, Hannibal smiled properly for the first time during the session, small, elegant, unsettling.
“The human nature,” he said, “is a contradiction.”
He stood then, moving toward the fireplace with slow composure.
“Humans are capable of immense tenderness while committing terrible cruelty. They long to protect what they also wish to possess.” He glanced back at Will briefly.
“They confuse love with hunger remarkably often.”
The words settled heavily in the room.
Will looked away first, after holding Hannibal’s gaze for longer than he intended to.
“And you think they can survive that?” he asked quietly.
Hannibal turned his attention back to the fire, watching the flames consume the wood piece by piece.
“I think,” he said softly, “it may become something far more interesting because of it.”
Hannibal remained near the fireplace.
Will watched him carefully.
There were moments, in sessions like these, where Hannibal stopped sounding like a psychiatrist and started sounding like something else entirely.
He wasn’t describing humanity from within it, but from a distance.
“You talk about human nature like it’s a performance,” Will said after a while, his voice quieter now.
Hannibal glanced back at him, thoughtful.
“I think goodness… the humanity… is often a form of appetite,” he replied. “As is cruelty.”
Will frowned slightly.
“That’s cynical.”
“No,” Hannibal corrected gently. “Intimate.”
The fire cracked softly.
Hannibal moved back toward his chair, slow and elegant.
“Humans want desperately to believe they are singular things. Good. Evil. Selfless. Corrupt.” A faint smile touched his mouth.
“But people are ecosystems, Will. Contradictory creatures. Capable of devotion and violence in the same breath.”
Will looked down at his hands.
“And … they?”
Hannibal’s gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly at the way he asked it.
“It is discovering contradiction for the first time,” Hannibal said. “Until now, she understood morality in absolutes. Divine structures tend to encourage that.”
“They still seem…” Will searched for the word. “Pure.”
That made Hannibal smile faintly.
“Purity is often just inexperience.”
Will leaned back deeper into the chair, exhaling slowly through his nose.
He hated how much he kept thinking about you.
About the softness of your wings beneath his fingertips.
About how you looked at him without calculation or suspicion in your eyes.
Humans rarely looked at one another like that.
“They trust you,” Will said quietly.
“I rescued it.”
“You hurt them too.”
The silence that followed was not hostile. If anything, it deepened the strange current already running beneath the conversation.
Hannibal studied him for a long moment before answering.
“Yes,” he said simply.
Will swallowed once, “What happened to their wing?”
There it was again.
That pull.
Hannibal noticed immediately the subtle shift in Will’s posture whenever your wings entered the conversation.
The fixation in his eyes.
Entrancement.
“How observant,” Hannibal noted.
Will frowned, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hannibal tilted his head slightly, amusement ghosting across his features. “You seem particularly fascinated by them.”
Will looked away immediately, almost irritated by how accurate the observation was.
“They’re hard not to look at,” he muttered.
“Yes,” Hannibal agreed softly. “They are.”
“It was injured when I found it,” Hannibal continued at last. “The wing had partially torn during the fall.”
Will visibly winced at the image.
Hannibal noticed that too.
“It feels everything now with remarkable intensity,” Hannibal said, watching him carefully. “Touch especially. Pain. Fatigue. Hunger. The body is still… overwhelming to it.”
“They reacted like they’d never been touched before,” he said quietly, remembering how you first reacted to him.
Hannibal’s eyes darkened slightly with interest.
“In many ways,” he replied, “it hasn’t.”
Will looked up.
Something unreadable passed between them then, brief and almost intimate in its own right.
Hannibal saw the curiosity taking root inside him.
And perhaps worse than Will’s fascination…
Was how gently he handled it.
Hannibal found himself wondering what would happen when that gentleness finally met hunger.
Will woke sometime past midnight with the familiar sensation of heat crawling beneath his skin.
His head throbbed behind his eyes in slow, wet pulses, fever settling deep in his bones like rot.
For a moment he stayed in bed staring at the ceiling, disoriented, trying to settle the pulsing of his head.
White feathers.
Dark eyes.
Hannibal’s voice.
It is learning what it means to be alive.
The words lingered like a stain he would never be able to wash from the pores it had sunk into.
Eventually he dragged himself from bed and wandered into the kitchen barefoot, exhaustion hanging from him heavily.
The floorboards were cold beneath his feet.
He poured himself a glass of water with trembling hands and drank greedily, trying to soothe the dryness clawing at his throat.
Outside, the woods behind the house stood motionless beneath the moonlight.
Will rested one hand against the counter and looked absently through the kitchen window.
Then he froze.
The stag was there again.
Standing just beyond the tree line.
Massive. Dark between the pure white snow.
It had followed him for a while now, always watching with those impossible eyes.
Usually it appeared untouched, almost regal in its silence.
Tonight it looked slaughtered.
Blood drenched its face in thick crimson slick, dark and glistening against its fur.
Wet strings of red hung from its jaw and throat as though it had fed recently, violently.
Its antlers twisted toward the sky like dead branches.
And tangled among them…
Feathers.
White feathers.
Will’s breath caught painfully in his chest.
One antler in particular carried something worse: a torn piece of wing flesh skewered through the sharpened tip like a trophy ripped fresh from a carcass.
Pale feathers fluttered weakly in the winter wind, stained red at the root.
Will immediately thought of you.
Of your injured wing dragging behind you across Hannibal’s bedroom floor.
Of the stitches.
Of the way you had flinched when he touched you.
The stag stared directly at him through the glass.
Its eyes were wrong.
Too intelligent.
Too knowing.
Will felt the fever surge violently through him.
The glass slipped from his hand and shattered across the kitchen floor.
Still the stag did not move.
A pulse of nausea rolled through him as he stepped closer to the window despite every instinct screaming at him not to.
His reflection merged faintly with the creature’s shape in the dark glass until he could no longer tell where he ended and it began.
The feathers hanging from the antlers shifted softly.
One drifted loose.
It floated downward through the snow in slow spirals.
Will could swear he heard something.
A faint rustling somewhere behind him.
He turned sharply toward the dark hallway, pulse hammering.
Nothing.
Only shadows stretching long across the walls.
When he looked back toward the forest, the stag was closer.
It now stood at the very edge of the yard.
Blood dripped steadily from its mouth into the snow.
And stuck in the creature’s antlers was a feather so bright and soft and unmistakably yours that Will suddenly felt sick with the horrible certainty that the thing outside was not hunting you.
It was showing him what would become of you.
Or worse…
What he himself would become.
Will did not remember deciding to pick up the phone.
One moment he was standing barefoot in the kitchen staring at the blood smeared snow beyond the window, and the next he was gripping the counter hard enough for his knuckles to ache while his phone trembled violently in his hand.
The stag was gone now.
Or maybe it had never been there.
He could still see the feathers.
White.
Wet with blood.
His pulse hammered so hard it hurt.
The line rang once.
Twice.
Then Hannibal answered.
“Will.”
Will opened his mouth, but the words came out tangled.
“Hannibal–” His breathing hitched sharply. “I–I– there– I–”
His vision flickered violently.
The kitchen lights dimmed and brightened again in nauseating waves. He pressed a hand to his forehead, suddenly burning hot.
“Will?”
“There– feathers…” Will stammered, barely hearing himself.
The room lurched sideways.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
Will doubled over with a strangled gasp, knocking into the counter as the phone nearly slipped from his fingers.
His thoughts no longer connected properly; images bled into one another in feverish fragments.
Your wings opening slowly in the dark.
Blood soaking white feathers.
Something warm ran from Will’s nose.
Blood.
He blinked at the drops splattering onto the floorboards.
“Will,” Hannibal said again, lower this time. “Listen to me carefully. Sit down.”
Will tried.
His knees buckled before he managed it.
The world dissolved into strobing pieces around him.
The kitchen floor rushed upward.
Somewhere far away he heard himself making a horrible choking sound.
Then the seizure hit.
His body locked violently.
The phone crashed beside him.
For a few terrible seconds Will remained dimly aware of everything at once.
The unbearable convulsions wracking through his limbs, the taste of iron flooding his mouth, the sound of Hannibal’s voice.
“Will.”
Again.
Closer somehow.
“Will.”
Darkness kept surging over the edges of his vision in heavy waves. He saw the stag again standing at the end of the hallway now, impossibly inside the house, its antlers scraping against the ceiling.
Will tried to speak though he wasn’t even sure he truly knew how to.
Nothing came out except another broken sound.
Then movement.
Hands gripping him.
Strong hands.
Reality blurred beyond recognition after that. He became aware only in fragments.
Cold night air.
The sensation of being lifted.
A familiar scent of expensive cologne and leather and something metallic beneath it.
Hannibal.
Will tried to focus on his face but everything smeared together into an oil painting full of colours that endlessly blended into each other.
Will surfaced from the darkness like he was dragged upward through deep water.
At first there was only warmth.
Warmth and softness wrapped around him so completely that for one disoriented moment he thought he was still dreaming.
Or dead.
Or both in a way he couldn’t explain.
His body ached terribly, heavy and sweat-damp beneath the blankets, but something else lay over him too.
Something softer than fabric.
Heavier than linen.
Feathers.
His brow twitched faintly.
Then voices.
Low.
Close.
“…still sleeping,” you whispered somewhere nearby.
Will forced his eyes open a fraction.
The white of your feathers swam in and out of focus.
He recognized his worn couch beneath him, the distant sound of dogs shifting restlessly somewhere.
And draped over nearly his entire body,
One of your wings.
It enveloped him like a living blanket, thick layers of white feathers spread carefully over him.
The wing was enormous.
Warm.
The down near its underside rose and fell faintly with your breathing where you sat beside him.
Will stared weakly at it.
The last thing he remembered was blood.
The stag outside the window.
Then Hannibal’s voice.
A soft clinking sound came from the kitchen nearby.
Hannibal.
Will could hear him moving calmly through the space as though nothing unusual had occurred at all.
A knife against a cutting board.
Liquid simmering softly in a pot.
Domestic sounds, absurdly enough.
“Has he woken yet?” Hannibal asked from the kitchen.
You shifted slightly beside the couch. Will felt the feathers move against him.
“…He made a sound,” you answered quietly.
Then the wing lifted.
Light spilled suddenly across Will’s face as you carefully drew the feathers back from him.
Your eyes met his instantly.
Wide.
Dark.
Watchful.
There was something almost unbearably soft in your expression when you realized he was awake.
“Will?” you asked gently.
Your voice still carried that strange otherness to it, something melodic beneath the words.
You leaned a little closer.
“Are you alright?”
Will blinked several times, trying to orient himself.
His head pounded viciously.
His limbs still felt weak and detached from his body.
But all he could really focus on was you.
You sat beside him wrapped in one of Hannibal’s dark sweaters, neat cuts allowing your wings to fit through the clothing.
Will swallowed thickly.
Before he could answer, Hannibal entered the room carrying a bowl of steaming soup.
His sleeves were rolled neatly to his forearms, expression composed as always, though his eyes immediately flicked toward Will.
“Good,” Hannibal said smoothly as he approached. “It’s nice to see you conscious again.”
He set the bowl down on the table beside the couch before standing over both of you.
“You experienced a mild seizure,” he continued calmly.
Mild.
Will could only remember that it felt everything but mild.
His gaze drifted back toward you instead.
Your wing still rested partly across his legs.
Will could feel Hannibal watching the way his eyes lingered on you, on the feathers still touching him, on the quiet concern written openly across your face.
And standing above the both of you in the pale morning light, Hannibal smiled very slightly.
Then his gaze shifted toward you.
“Would you give us a moment alone?” he said softly.
You immediately lowered your eyes and nodded.
“Yes.”
As you rose from beside the couch, your wing dragged lightly over Will one last time before slipping away completely, leaving coldness behind in its absence.
You moved quietly across the living room.
When you passed Hannibal, his hand lifted suddenly, fingertips brushing slowly against your forearm through the sleeve of the sweater.
“You did very well,” he said low enough that only you could hear. “Keeping him warm like that.”
The praise settled inside you with frightening intensity.
Your breath caught softly.
Something deep within you seemed to ache at the touch.
At the approval threaded through his voice.
Warmth bloomed painfully through your chest, almost dizzying.
You found yourself leaning ever so slightly into his hand before you could stop yourself.
Hannibal noticed that too.
His thumb traced once along your arm before withdrawing.
And suddenly you wanted more.
More praise.
More touch.
More of that terrible warmth that only seemed to exist when his attention settled fully upon you.
You lowered your head quickly and continued from the room, wings folding against your back.
But you did not go far.
Halfway down the hallway you stopped near the corner where the wall partially concealed you from view.
The house remained dim and quiet around you.
You knew you should leave.
You had been asked to.
And yet…
You lingered.
The feeling itself was strange enough to make your stomach twist.
In Heaven obedience had not been something questioned.
Things simply were.
Harmony had existed without temptation beside it.
But now temptation sat heavy inside your mortal body.
Curiosity.
Want.
The need to hear what they said when you were absent.
You stood perfectly still beside the hallway corner, your wings tucked close as though trying to make yourself smaller, quieter.
Hidden.
From the living room you could hear the low murmur of voices.
“…don’t remember much,” Will admitted hoarsely.
“You were delirious,” Hannibal replied calmly. “Your fever was extremely high.”
Then Will again, quieter this time.
“They stayed with me?”
You felt something flutter painfully beneath your ribs hearing that.
Hannibal answered after a measured silence.
“It was concerned.”
The words wrapped around you strangely.
It felt like his approval before.
But immediately guilt struck you.
Sharp.
Cold.
You froze.
The sensation was horrifyingly familiar despite being entirely new.
Not fear exactly.
Something heavier.
Dirtier.
You were doing something wrong.
The awareness crawled beneath your skin like insects.
You had disobeyed.
You had not done what Hannibal asked of you.
And that so easily.
The realization made your chest tighten painfully.
Was this what sin felt like?
The sickening awareness of wanting something you should not.
From the living room, Will spoke again.
“They looked…” His voice faltered slightly. “different.”
Hannibal hummed softly. “It is adjusting.”
You closed your eyes briefly.
Adjusting.
As though this new hunger inside you were merely another symptom of becoming human.
“Isn’t that right?”
Your eyes snapped open.
Hannibal’s voice carried easily through the silence.
Calm.
Certain.
He knew.
Heat flooded your face instantly.
Slowly, hesitantly, you leaned just enough around the corner to see him standing in the living room doorway now, one hand resting lightly against the frame.
His gaze met yours immediately.
Amused.
Behind him, Will turned weakly on the couch to look toward you as well, confusion flickering across his exhausted face.
You felt suddenly exposed beneath both their gazes.
Caught.
A strange panic rose inside your chest.
“I’m sorry,” you said quickly, almost breathlessly. “I–I was only–”
Only what?
Listening?
Watching?
Wanting?
The words tangled uselessly inside you.
Hannibal studied you for a long moment before speaking.
“You were curious,” he said gently.
Understanding.
Something inside you twisted harder at that.
Your wings tightened instinctively behind your back, feathers trembling faintly.
With growing horror you understood that part of you had wanted to be caught.
The dogs exploded into the snow the moment Will opened the door properly, disappearing into the pale yard.
Their barking echoed softly through the trees while snow drifted lazily from the sky above.
You stood near the porch at first, uncertain.
The cold bit immediately.
Not just uncomfortable.
Painful.
Sharp little needles sinking into your skin and lungs with every breath you took.
You stared down at the snow collecting around your bare feet, fascinated and unsettled by the sensation all at once.
“It burns.” you noted quietly.
Will glanced back at you from where he stood near the steps. “Yeah. That’s winter.”
You stepped cautiously into the snow anyway.
The crunch beneath your foot startled you enough that your wings twitched instinctively.
One of the dogs bounded toward you, tail wagging as it circled your legs.
You let out a soft sound of surprise before crouching carefully to touch it, fingers disappearing into thick fur.
A small smile appeared on your face then.
Faint.
Fragile.
Will found himself staring.
It changed you completely when you smiled.
For a moment you stopped looking like something wounded and holy and instead looked almost content.
Curious.
Alive in a way that felt painfully human.
The dogs quickly pulled you further into the yard.
You followed awkwardly at first, long wings dragging through fresh snow behind you.
You laughed once when one of the dogs leapt against you unexpectedly.
For a while he simply watched you move through the snow beneath the dead winter trees.
Then he noticed the trembling.
At first it was subtle.
Your hands shaking slightly when you reached down toward one of the dogs again.
Your breathing becoming shallower.
Your shoulders pulling tighter inward.
You didn’t seem to recognize what was happening.
Of course you didn’t.
You still treated your body like something separate from yourself.
Will moved toward you before really thinking about it.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
You looked up at him immediately.
Snow had gathered in your hair and lashes. Your nose and fingertips were tinged pink with cold.
“You’re freezing.”
You blinked slowly. “I am?”
Will stared at you for a second before letting out a quiet breath through his nose.
“Jesus Christ.”
Without really asking, he reached forward and took your hands carefully into his own.
They were ice cold.
You flinched faintly at the sudden warmth of his palms surrounding yours, eyes widening just a little as he rubbed heat back into your fingers.
“You have to pay attention to this stuff,” he muttered.
“Cold, hunger, exhaustion… your body tells you when something’s wrong.”
You watched him silently.
His hands were rougher than Hannibal’s.
“Hannibal says pain is important,” you said after a moment.
Will’s jaw tightened slightly.
“Pain tells you when you’re hurt,” he replied quietly.
“Doesn’t mean you’re supposed to ignore it.”
The dogs circled around the two of you, kicking up snow as they ran.
You lowered your gaze to your hands trapped gently between his.
“It’s difficult,” you admitted softly. “Everything hurts now. All the time. Even small things.”
“I know,” Will said.
Behind the kitchen window, Hannibal watched the scene unfold in silence.
He stood partially obscured by the dim interior light, a glass of wine loose in one hand as he observed the careful way Will held your freezing hands between his own.
Interesting.
Will handled you with gentleness that Hannibal had rarely seen in him.
And you, who looked to Hannibal for guidance like flowers turned toward sunlight, allowed Will close without fear.
By late afternoon the snowfall had thickened outside, covering the yard in blue-white dusk.
You sat curled at one end of Will’s couch beneath several blankets while the dogs crowded around your legs for warmth.
Will sat nearby in an armchair, half watching you, half pretending to read.
Hannibal emerged from the kitchen fastening the buttons of his coat with calm precision.
“I’ll need to leave for the evening,” he said smoothly.
Will looked up immediately. “Now?”
“There’s work requiring my attention.”
The wording was vague enough that Will chose not to question it.
Hannibal’s gaze shifted toward you briefly before returning to him.
“Would it trouble you if…” he gestured toward you,” … remained here tonight?”
Will’s eyes flicked toward you.
You looked up too, immediately attentive.
For a brief second, something unreadable passed across Will’s face.
“No,” he answered quietly. “That’s fine.”
Hannibal smiled faintly.
You rose from the couch almost immediately, blanket slipping from your shoulders as you approached him.
There was something instinctive in the movement now, something conditioned.
Your eyes searched his face for approval before he’d even spoken.
“I’ll return tomorrow,” he told you softly.
You nodded at once.
But when Hannibal touched your cheek lightly in farewell, he noticed something curious.
Your gaze drifted past him for only a moment.
Toward Will.
Night settled heavily over the house.
You sat near the large window in the living room, wrapped loosely in one of Will’s blankets. Your wings hung low behind you, feathers brushing the wooden floor softly whenever you shifted.
Will sat nearby in his armchair, a half-finished cup of coffee forgotten beside him.
For a long time, neither of you said a word.
He understood the silence more than most people did.
Understood the strange emptiness that followed after someone left a room and took all its gravity with them.
And it began to dawn on him that Hannibal was that gravity for both of you.
You looked lost sitting there.
Will watched your reflection in the glass instead of looking directly at you.
“You keep looking outside,” he said quietly after a while.
You turned your head slightly toward him.
“It feels…” You hesitated. “Large.”
“The woods?”
You nodded faintly.
“In Heaven there was never distance like this.” Your eyes drifted back toward the dark trees beyond the glass. “Everything was close to everything else.”
Not exactly something that made sense to a human who just experienced time and space, but to you… it had been different.
Will leaned back slightly in his chair, studying you in silence for a moment.
Then, before he could stop himself, he asked, “What is Hannibal to you?”
The question lingered heavily in the room.
Your expression shifted faintly with confusion.
“I don’t know,” you admitted quietly.
Will’s gaze lowered briefly.
That answer should not have relieved him as much as it did.
You drew the blanket tighter around yourself before continuing, voice softer now.
“But when he speaks to me…” You pressed a hand lightly against your stomach, uncertain.
“There is a warm feeling here.”
Will’s eyes flicked to the gesture immediately.
“Warm?”
You nodded.
“I don’t understand it.”
Something uncomfortable moved beneath Will’s ribs then.
He looked away toward the fireplace, jaw tightening slightly.
“You mean attraction?” he asked carefully.
You frowned faintly at the unfamiliar word.
“I don’t know.”
Will let out a quiet breath through his nose.
You turned toward him more fully then, wings shifting softly behind you.
“Have you ever kissed Hannibal?”
The question landed with enough force to make him choke slightly on absolutely nothing.
“What?”
You blinked at him, entirely serious.
“The feeling,” you explained quietly. “Is that what causes kissing?”
Will stared at you for a long moment before rubbing a hand over his mouth.
“No,” he muttered roughly. “I haven’t kissed Hannibal.”
The answer came too quickly.
Too defensive.
You watched him with those impossibly dark eyes, head tilted slightly in quiet observation.
Then Will asked, more cautiously this time:
“Have you?”
You shook your head once.
“No.”
Silence filled the room again, but this time it felt different.
Thicker.
Something restless moved beneath it now.
Will became suddenly, painfully aware of everything.
The soft crackle of the fireplace.
The snow beyond the windows.
The way your blanket had slipped low enough to reveal the curve of your shoulder beneath the feathers gathered there.
You still looked at him with…
No shame.
No understanding of why the air between you had changed.
Will swallowed hard.
“Would you want him to?” he asked.
Your gaze drifted downward for a moment, thoughtful.
Then slowly, almost shyly, you nodded.
The movement sent something sharp and strange through him.
Not jealousy exactly.
Something uglier.
More hungry.
Will’s heart started to race, he rose from the chair, carefully.
As if any sound he made could shatter the tension of the moment and leave him back with nothing.
A few quiet steps later he stood at the edge of the couch you sat on, and very slowly, with your eyes on him the entire time, he lowered himself to sit there, at the edge of it, facing you.
It was the way you watched him that unsettled Will most.
There was no embarrassment in you, no instinctive human understanding that certain questions should remain unspoken.
You looked at him with complete openness, with that terrible sincerity that made him feel like his skin had been peeled back beneath your gaze.
Curious.
Hungry for understanding.
And far too observant for someone who should not to understand desire.
You tilted your head slightly as you watched him.
“Do you think he likes me?”
The question came gently, innocently, but it still struck him somewhere deep in the chest.
“Yes,” he answered finally, voice rougher than intended. “I think he does.”
You absorbed the answer quietly, the words made that familiar warmth pool in your stomach.
The room fell still again except for the crackle of the fireplace.
“Am I beautiful?” you asked after a moment.
It was a question that made no sense to you, but… you had noticed how presentation, beauty, was something humans seemed to care for.
A lot.
Since you had inhabited this human body, this mortal prison, your head had reacted differently when you saw yourself in a mirror.
Your exterior was no longer ever lasting.
Will looked up sharply.
For a second he genuinely did not know how to answer such a question.
Because…
Beautiful did not even begin to cover it.
You looked unreal.
Like something painted onto the inside of a cathedral ceiling before being dragged down into mud and blood and winter.
And worst of all, you truly did not know.
You asked the question with simple curiosity, not fishing for praise but searching for definition.
Trying to understand what others saw when they looked at you.
His gaze lingered too long.
You noticed.
He knew you noticed because your expression shifted slightly, eyes fixed intently on his face as though studying every flicker of emotion there.
“Yes,” Will said quietly at last.
His throat felt dry.
“You are beautiful.”
Something unreadable moved through your expression then.
Your fingers drifted absentmindedly along your own shoulder where the blanket had slipped slightly downward, exposing pale skin beneath loose feathers.
“Do you think Hannibal would kiss someone beautiful?”
Will’s stomach tightened painfully.
God.
You asked these things so openly, entirely unaware of what they did to him.
Or perhaps not entirely unaware anymore.
He shifted in his chair, jaw tightening.
“Yes,” he muttered.
“He would.”
Your gaze never left him.
Slowly, thoughtfully, you lifted your hand to your cheek, fingertips brushing lightly against your skin.
“Would he kiss me here?”
The question barely rose above a whisper.
Will felt heat crawl violently up the back of his neck.
You looked almost dreamlike sitting there.
Firelight flickering over your face, wings half wrapped around yourself like silk curtains, your fingers touching your cheek with devastating innocence.
And yet the air between you no longer felt innocent at all.
“Yes,” he said again, voice strained now. “He would.”
You studied him carefully.
Then your fingers moved lower.
Trailing slowly toward the corner of your mouth.
Will stopped breathing for a moment.
Your touch brushed lightly over your bottom lip, and something in his chest gave a sharp, ugly twist.
“Would he kiss me here?” you whispered.
The room suddenly felt far too warm.
His thoughts had become feverish things now, impossible to untangle from the image of you looking at him like this.
Your eyes were fixed entirely on him now.
Waiting.
Will swallowed hard, pulse hammering violently behind his ribs.
“Yes,” he rasped.
Will swore silently, his fingers trembling slightly as they reached the waistband of his pants.
His whole body tense with anticipation as he slowly undid the buckle of his pants, his eyes fixed on you.
He could see the curiosity in your gaze as you watched, and you didn’t look away.
He swallowed hard, his breath coming shallow and harsh.
You reached forward a bit, almost touching him when his hand gently pushed yours away.
He almost panted heavily as he shook his head “No.” He said quietly.
You sat back taking your hands back as you watched.
For a moment you just stared at him.
“Where else…?” he breathed now.
You swallowed, letting your hands travel back to your neck, dragging along the delicate line of your new found pulse, “Would... he kiss me.. here?” she continued asking.
His eyes followed your hand as it moved up to your throat.
Will was breathing heavily now, a quiet gasp escaping him before he could stop it at the sound of your soft, whispering voice.
His hand wrapped around himself tightly at the base of his length, the touch both pleasurable and torturous.
He gave you a small nod of encouragement.
“And... here…” you said, hands trailing over your collarbone, down to your feathery chest.
Will's eyes followed the path of your fingertips.
He could almost feel the softness of those small feathers.
He bit back a low moan as he squeezed his hand tightly.
“Yeah…” He whispered again. “There… he’d kiss you there, too…”
You watched his breathing get more ragged, and though your eyes refused to leave his, you could see his hand move in the corner of your eyes.
It was a sin, you knew that, but... it felt right.
You let your hands trail down your middle, to your stomach, low on your stomach you stopped, your eyes finding his with equal intensity. “And... here.” you breathed.
Will felt like he was going insane.
He let out another strangled breath, his hand gripping himself almost painfully now.
Your hands drifted to your legs now.
“And... kiss me here…” you hummed, your hands settling against your knee, until they dragged up a bit, to your upper thigh.
“And... here…”
Will felt his breath catch in his throat as your hands moved up your thighs, stopping just below your hips.
His gaze roamed over your body desperately, drinking in every detail like a man dying of thirst.
He could feel the most sinful pleasure yet coil deep in his stomach as precum already oozed from his tip, his breathing ragged.
Your eyes searched his clearly, leaning back just a bit.
“Do... do you think he would want to kiss me here…” you breathed quietly, your hand painfully slowly dragging from your thighs in between them, resting to cup the heat that felt it held your desire to sin all in one.
He watched you with dark, hooded eyes, his gaze tracking your every move as you slowly, deliberately, reached between your thighs in a touch that was both innocent and sinful.
He let out a ragged gasp, the sound almost a moan.
You watched him, his gasps and sounds and low moans, for a moment you didn’t move, just watching the tension rise in him.
“What if... I was pretending it was you…”
you breathed, eyes locked with his.
Will’s heart slammed against his chest, his breath catching in his throat at the words.
"Is that... bad?" you added.
For a moment, he couldn’t even speak.
The image your words stirred up in him was… almost too much to bear.
The thought of you wanting him, of you pretending that it was his hands on your body, his mouth on your skin…
The tension in Will became unbearable suddenly, your gaze locked on his with such awareness of the sinfulness of it, but with equal innocence.
His body tensed and with a rough groan, the relief washed over him.
It was almost overwhelming, almost painful, and yet he didn’t take his eyes off you for even a second.
He watched you intently, breathless and disheveled, his skin flush with heat and desire.
You watched him, his eyes and face, not his body.
You let out a shaky breath, your hands shakily laying in your lap now.
Will was still breathing heavily, his body slowly beginning to come down from the sharp high of his release.
He tucked himself into his pants, his fingers still trembling slightly from the strength of the orgasm.
He looked at you again, his gaze dark and heavy-lidded.
His throat was dry and scratchy as he finally spoke, "Thank you for... telling me..."
You nodded, unsure what to respond as Will rose to his feet again.
Something warm spread inside you and something heavy felt like it was added to your wings.
But the overwhelming warmth made your head dizzy and your thoughts clouded.
Will cleared his throat roughly.
“You should probably get some rest.”
You studied him for a moment, sensing something altered in him now even if you could not name it.
Still, you nodded.
“Okay.”
You settled carefully onto the couch beneath the blankets.
Your wings unfolded instinctively around your body afterward, draping over yourself in layers of soft white feathers until you looked almost cocooned inside them.
Will stood nearby watching.
There was something deeply unnatural about the sight.
You looked up at him again.
“Goodnight, Will.”
His throat tightened unexpectedly.
“...Goodnight.”
He reached over finally and turned the lamp off.
Darkness settled softly through the room.
Will remained standing in the hallway for several seconds longer than necessary, staring toward the shape of you curled on the couch.
Then, quietly, he turned and disappeared toward his bedroom.
The house fell still.
And in the darkness, several feathers loosened silently from your wings.
They drifted downward one by one.
Not white anymore.
At their tips, the color had begun to change.
Soft stains of grey spreading slowly through the feathers like ink through water.
from heaven to earth to hell
pairing: hannibal lecter x will graham x fallen!angel!reader
genre: horror • angst
notes: winner of my recent poll!, you are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time... as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal...
warning: Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury
MINORS DNI!!
masterlist
join my taglist
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
part 5
Sleep came to you in fragments.
It was not the easy, weightless drifting you once knew.
There was no quiet suspension in something divine and endless.
This was different.
Heavy.
Demanding.
Your body pulled you under whether you wished it or not.
And pain followed you there,
lingering like something patient,
something unwilling to release its hold.
When you finally surfaced again, it was not by choice.
The sound of the front door closing echoed faintly through the house,
distant yet enough to pull you from the depths.
Your eyes opened.
Slowly,
unfocused at first,
your body reluctant to move as awareness crept back into you.
The room felt too warm.
Too real.
You pushed yourself upright in the soft linen bed.
Movements slow and careful.
Your wings shifted behind you with a quiet rustle.
One of them still ached.
A dull, persistent reminder of what had been done to you.
What had been fixed.
Your gaze drifted toward the window.
Snow fell steadily outside.
For a moment, you simply watched it, trying to ground yourself in something familiar.
Something distant from the strange, suffocating reality you had woken into.
Then you noticed it.
Two cars.
Parked just beyond the window.
The thought lingered only briefly before footsteps echoed somewhere below.
He was home.
The sound of movement carried through the house with unsettling clarity.
Coats being set aside.
And then, footsteps ascending.
Closer.
Closer.
A knock came at your door.
Soft.
Controlled.
It opened before you could respond.
“You’re awake.”
Hannibal’s voice was calm.
Observational.
As though he had expected nothing else.
You lifted your head immediately.
Your attention drawn to him without hesitation.
Your wings lay draped across the bed behind you, one still bound in careful dressing.
“Yes,” you said, nodding once.
There was a pause before you added, softer, “Hello.”
The word felt uncertain in your mouth.
Hannibal stepped inside fully, closing the door behind him.
Your hands had come together without thought, fingers lacing loosely as they rested in your lap.
It resembled prayer, though you no longer knew what you were praying to.
Or who.
His gaze lingered on it for a moment.
Then he moved further into the room, taking a seat in the armchair across from you.
One leg crossing over the other as though this were any ordinary visit.
“I trust you slept well.”
It did not sound like a question.
You nodded again.
“My back still hurts,” you admitted, quieter now.
Almost hesitant, as though acknowledging the pain felt like a failure rather than a consequence.
You adjusted your wings carefully, the movement small, controlled.
Hannibal’s eyes sharpened.
Not with concern, but with interest.
He rose without comment and crossed the room, retrieving a small bottle from the bedside table.
The soft rattle of pills sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet space as he shook two into his palm.
He held them out to you.
“Take these.”
“They will dull the discomfort.”
The words settled heavily, carrying something unspoken beneath them.
Your pain was no longer entirely your own.
He decided when it lessened.
When it remained.
You had hesitated only for the briefest moment before obeying.
The pills had felt foreign on your tongue.
Chalky,
bitter,
wrong.
And when you swallowed them dry, the sensation dragged painfully down your throat.
As though your body rejected the very idea of being altered so… artificially.
Still, you said nothing.
You simply thanked him,
Soft and quiet.
Hannibal watched you closely as you did it.
There had been something deeply satisfying in that moment.
Not the act itself.
But the way you complied.
No resistance.
No questioning.
Just trust… or something close enough to it that it hardly mattered.
You shifted on the bed afterward, wings stretching instinctively behind you, the motion pulling at healing tissue.
A small, involuntary wince escaped you before you could stop it.
He noticed, of course.
He always noticed.
“Lift your wing a bit.”
It wasn’t phrased as a suggestion.
It wasn’t even a request.
A command, delivered without force because it didn’t need any.
You hesitated only a fraction of a second before obeying.
Both wings lifted, spreading slightly despite the strain.
The injured one protested immediately.
Pain blooming through it in a hot, pulsing wave.
But you swallowed it down.
Lips pressing together as if silence could erase the sensation entirely.
Hannibal nodded, pleased in a way he didn’t bother to hide.
He moved closer then.
Seating himself at the edge of the bed.
His gaze swept slowly over your back.
Over the careful bandaging.
Over the places he had touched and altered.
Then his hand came to rest against your side.
The contact made you flinch.
It was small.
Almost imperceptible.
But your wings betrayed you.
They shuddered faintly, drawing in just slightly as if to shield something vulnerable.
You forced them still almost immediately, forcing yourself still.
He noticed that too.
Your body was learning before your mind could catch up.
Learning what to expect.
Learning what to endure.
You didn’t pull away.
You let him touch you where he pleased.
Your gaze lifted to meet his only briefly before drifting again.
Uncertain.
“Is somebody else here…?”
You had seen the second car.
You had heard enough to know something had changed.
“Will Graham,” he said evenly.
“He’s having dinner here tonight. With me.”
A simple statement.
You nodded, not in agreement, but in acceptance, folding your wings back carefully, easing them into a resting position.
Hannibal leaned closer then.
His fingers moved again.
Slowly tracing circles against your hip,
the touch lighter now,
almost soothing.
Almost.
“I need you to stay in this room after our guest arrives.”
“Can you do that for me?”
There it was again.
That careful illusion of choice.
You nodded.
“I will.”
And you meant it.
Not because you had to.
But because something in you.
Something that had once belonged to heaven, to devotion, to purpose.
Something had already begun to shift… to bend… to seek something new to anchor itself to.
Him.
Hannibal watched you in silence for a long moment.
The absence of hesitation.
How readily you had agreed.
A low hum left him at last, quiet and satisfied.
“Good.”
When he moved away, you felt it.
The absence of something steadier.
Something anchoring.
He crossed the room.
You followed him with your eyes.
As though pulled by an invisible thread.
By the time he reached the door, you had already sunk back into the bed.
Your wings folding over you instinctively, cocooning your form in soft white.
You looked smaller like that.
Breakable.
Hannibal paused with his hand on the doorframe and turned to look at you once more.
A transformation unfolding exactly as it should.
The faintest smile ghosted across his lips before it disappeared again.
Then he closed the door.
Softly.
The sound lingered.
And just like that, you were alone.
Time stretched differently after that.
You did not measure it in hours.
Not the way humans did.
Instead, you felt it…
each passing moment pressing faintly against your ribs,
settling into your bones.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
Your thoughts began to echo in ways they never had before.
Boredom.
It came slowly.
Uncertain.
Something you did not fully recognize.
Fear came with it.
It coiled low in your chest.
Unfamiliar and unwelcome.
Tightening.
Hannibal had left you.
Not abandoned…you told yourself that firmly.
And yet…
You waited.
Because waiting felt right.
Because believing in him felt necessary.
Because without that belief,
there was only the hollow,
aching absence of everything
you had lost.
So you stayed.
Still.
Patient.
Voices.
Two of them.
The low murmur of conversation drifted upward, accompanied by the soft clink of cutlery, the occasional shift of chairs across polished floors.
Hannibal’s voice carried easily, smooth and controlled as ever.
Another voice answered him.
Will.
The name meant nothing to you yet, but the presence did.
Another human.
Another unknown.
You listened without meaning to.
Your body still as you strained to understand words that blurred together into tone rather than meaning.
Dinner passed like that.
Below, everything remained perfect.
The food, no doubt, had been exquisite.
The wine chosen with care.
Eventually, he rose, and guided his guest toward the stairs with quiet insistence.
Will followed.
The door opened.
Light spilled into the room, cutting through the dim stillness you had settled into.
You sat up immediately.
The blanket clutched instinctively to your body, wings drawing tighter around you as your gaze snapped toward the unfamiliar figure standing in the doorway.
For a moment, the world narrowed to that single point…
stranger,
presence,
unknown.
Your breath caught.
Then your eyes moved.
They found Hannibal almost immediately, searching.
Not for protection, but for something deeper.
Something instinctive.
Guidance.
Permission.
Recognition.
And now, without words, you waited to understand what you were meant to be in this moment…
and who, exactly, you were allowed to be in front of someone new.
Hannibal stepped into the room after Will.
He watched you immediately.
Watched the way your gaze found him without hesitation, as though drawn by instinct rather than thought.
You searched his face,
not with panic,
not even with confusion.
But with…
the need for direction.
It pleased him more than he allowed to show.
Your vulnerability lay bare in every movement, every breath.
There was nothing divine in it anymore.
Not in the way you held yourself, not in the way you waited.
You looked… broken.
And yet, there was beauty in that.
He gave you the smallest nod.
So subtle it might have gone unnoticed by anyone else in the room.
But not by you.
Will shifted beside him, visibly unsettled.
Your gaze lingered too long.
Too openly.
And it made something in him falter.
His fingers moved restlessly at the hem of his shirt.
His eyes betrayed him.
They dipped, just briefly, catching on the shape of your wing.
Stitched.
Torn.
Something unnatural forced into repair.
There was something deeply wrong about it.
Something that made his stomach tighten before his gaze flicked back up, almost guiltily.
To Hannibal.
As if seeking permission to react.
To feel.
To understand what, exactly, he was looking at.
Hannibal said nothing.
And that silence was permission enough.
You let the blanket fall.
Slowly.
There was no shame in the motion.
No instinct to hide yourself, or your nudity, beyond what your body had already learned.
The bandages wrapped across your chest and back, splotched with slight tinges of red.
They stood stark against your skin.
A testament to what had been done to you.
To what you had endured.
Or perhaps…
what you had been made into.
You sat up properly then, adjusting your wings.
Before reaching to switch on the small lamp beside you.
Warm light spilled across the room.
Soft but revealing.
Catching in your eyes as they settled fully on Will.
“Hello,” you said.
Your voice was gentle.
Too gentle for the space it filled.
Will swallowed.
Hard.
There was something deeply disorienting about you.
Your voice did not match what he saw.
Did not match the wrongness.
You sounded… untouched.
“Hello.” he echoed.
His eyes lingered again despite himself.
Taking you in piece by piece.
The way you moved.
The unnatural grace that still clung to you, even now.
The way your body seemed caught between something sacred and something disturbingly fragile.
You tilted your head slightly, studying him in return.
There was no fear in it.
Only curiosity.
You rose from the bed slowly, your wings shifting behind you as you did.
The moment your weight fully settled onto your feet, pain flared.
Sharp.
Unrelenting.
Your body betrayed you.
A small, broken falter.
A wince you couldn’t quite contain.
Your hand caught the edge of the bed to steady yourself.
Will moved before he could stop himself.
A single step forward.
Something he couldn’t quite name.
But he halted just as quickly, as though remembering where he was.
Who he was with.
His gaze flicked, again, to Hannibal.
Hannibal did not move.
He simply watched the moment unfold with quiet interest.
Eyes tracing the tension in Will’s posture.
The hesitation.
The pull toward you that he was already failing to resist.
And you…
Standing there between them.
Unsteady.
Wounded.
Still reaching, whether you realized it or not, for something to hold onto.
Something to believe in.
Something to follow.
Will’s gaze followed your every movement.
He noticed everything, the way your body resisted itself, the slight tremor in your legs, the way your wings dragged behind you as though they no longer belonged to you.
Every wince, every breath drawn a fraction too sharply, it all settled uneasily under his skin.
He stepped closer without thinking.
“You’re hurt…” he murmured, almost to himself, “You shouldn’t be standing.”
“I…” you began, forcing yourself upright despite the strain.
Despite the way your body protested in small, undeniable ways.
“I am fine.”
The words came out soft.
Wrong.
Your wings shifted behind you, heavy and unsteady, brushing against the floor as if they had forgotten their purpose.
Their lightness.
You stood fully now, though it cost you, and your eyes, inevitably, returned to Hannibal.
Seeking.
Waiting.
Hannibal made no effort to stop you, no effort to correct Will.
The moment was too delicate, too revealing.
Will stepped closer again, this time without hesitation.
Close enough to catch you.
His eyes flickered briefly toward Hannibal, searching for something.
Permission, perhaps, or restraint.
But found nothing there.
Only that same composed stillness.
That same watching.
Indifference.
He looked back at you.
“No,” Will said softly.
“You’re not.”
His gaze lingered on your wings, drawn to them in a way he couldn’t explain.
Damaged.
Stitched.
Wrong.
And yet, undeniably real.
He could see how they pulled at you, how they weighed you down.
“You can barely stand.”
For a moment, you held yourself there.
Suspended between will and limitation.
Between what you had been… and what you were now.
Then something in you gave.
You sank back down onto the edge of the bed, a soft sound slipping from you as the strain finally eased from your body.
Will exhaled.
Your gaze lowered to the floor as though it might offer something steady to hold onto.
You did not speak unless spoken to.
It had already become instinct.
At some point, Hannibal left.
You did not hear the exact moment the door closed, but you felt it, the quiet shift in the room, the absence of him settling into the air like something hollowed out.
And suddenly, it was just you and the other man.
Will shifted his weight, then stilled, then shifted again, as though his body could not decide whether to stay or retreat.
His hands disappeared into his pockets, an attempt at grounding himself in something familiar, something ordinary.
But nothing about this room was ordinary.
Nothing about you was.
His gaze kept returning to you.
Drawn.
Pulled.
Unable to settle anywhere else for long.
It flickered over your wings, over the visible tear and the careful stitching, over the way they lay heavy and unnatural against the bed.
His fingers twitched slightly.
As if he wanted to reach out.
As if he had to stop himself from doing it.
Silence stretched.
Long enough to become something tangible.
“Are you Hannibal’s friend?”
Your voice broke through it softly.
You lifted your gaze just enough to meet his.
Studying him with quiet intensity before shifting back, retreating further onto the bed.
Will blinked, caught off guard.
“Uh… yeah,” he said, clearing his throat, his voice rougher than he expected. “Yeah, you could say we’re friends…”
The word felt inadequate the moment he said it.
His eyes dropped again, pulled back to your wings despite himself.
“Hannibal said you were… an angel.”
He hesitated on the word, as if testing how it felt in his mouth.
“Is that… true?”
You did not answer immediately.
You should have.
Once, it would have been simple. A truth so inherent it required no thought, no hesitation.
But now…
Now it felt…
Uncertain.
Your gaze lifted again, searching his face instead.
“Do you believe him?”
Will stilled.
The question unsettled him more than the answer would have.
He frowned slightly, his hands tightening in his pockets as he considered it.
Not just the words, but you.
The way you asked.
The way you watched him.
“I… I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I believe Hannibal… but…”
But this should not exist.
But you were sitting right in front of him.
He didn’t finish the thought.
He couldn’t.
“I am real,” you said.
“And an angel… or at least I used to be.”
“Used to…?” he repeated, his voice low, careful.
“You mean… you’re not an angel anymore?”
His gaze flickered again to your wings, as though searching for confirmation.
Or contradiction.
“I fell.”
Something shifted in Will’s expression then.
Subtle, but unmistakable.
“Fallen…” he echoed, the word heavier now, dragging meaning behind it.
You nodded.
“Yes.”
And there you were.
Not monstrous.
Not corrupted in the way the stories would have insisted.
Your wings, though damaged, remained soft, pale, almost painfully white.
They framed you like something sacred that had been mishandled, not destroyed.
Will stared a moment too long.
Because nothing about you aligned with what he thought this should be.
You did not look like something cast out.
You looked like something that had been taken.
“Why…?” he began, his voice quieter than before, as if the question itself required care.
“Why did you fall?”
He couldn’t reconcile it.
There was nothing about you that suggested corruption, or malice, or anything deserving of exile.
You looked too gentle.
Too untouched.
You shifted, drawing your legs up onto the bed, folding inward as though the question itself had weight.
“I don’t know,” you said simply.
There was no hesitation in the answer.
Only emptiness.
“ I really don’t.”
And then you disappeared.
Your wings rose around you, enclosing you completely. Feather layered over feather until there was nothing left of you but the faint suggestion of movement beneath them.
A living cocoon.
A barrier.
A retreat.
Will watched it happen in silence.
Something in his chest tightened.
You looked smaller like that.
Smaller than before, diminished in a way that had nothing to do with your physical form.
He took a step closer before he could stop himself.
His hand lifted slightly, betraying him, hovering in the air as though drawn by instinct toward the soft curve of your wings.
He didn’t touch you.
But he wanted to.
The urge sat heavy in his chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
“You don’t know… why you fell?” he asked again, quieter now, as though repetition might force meaning into the answer.
You were silent for a moment longer.
“God doesn’t love me anymore.”
Your voice came muffled from within the feathers, fragile and matter-of-fact in a way that made it worse.
You did not say it like a fear.
You said it like truth.
Your eyes appeared then, just barely visible between the layers of white, watching him through the small opening you allowed.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I… don’t know.”
Again.
Always the same answer.
And then you vanished once more, wings pulling tighter around you, closing you off completely.
Will exhaled slowly.
“You don’t know a lot of things about yourself, do you?” he said, quieter than the words deserved, a faint edge of something bitter threading through them.
You didn’t respond.
Because there was nothing to say.
Because it was true.
What you had been, what had defined you, was gone, stripped cleanly away, leaving something hollow in its place.
You were still here, still breathing, still existing…
But without that, without purpose, without direction…
You were nothing.
Will stood there, staring at the silent wall of feathers.
You looked like something wounded. Something that did not understand the harm done to it, only that it hurt.
“Don’t you… miss Heaven?”
“There is a lot of pain in being… human,” you answered quietly from behind the shelter of your wings. “In Heaven, I did not… feel like I do now.”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment.
“I know that feeling.”
His gaze lingered on you longer than he intended.
“…You feel too much now?” he asked.
“Yes,” you said simply, as if it were the most obvious truth in the world.
“It is always… something. Something touching me. Hot, cold. Pain. So much pain. Fatigue. Hunger. Thirst…”
“I do not know much about being human. But this… feels like agony.”
The word settled between you both.
Agony.
Will’s jaw tightened, something unreadable tightening with it in his chest.
Like suffering was simply another condition of existence you had not been warned about.
“Yeah,” he said again, quieter now. “That’s… what it’s like.”
A pause stretched.
The room felt too still, too aware of itself.
Will glanced toward the door without turning fully.
“…Do you want me to go?” he asked.
“…No,”
Something in his posture shifted at that.
Subtle, unconscious relief, immediately followed by confusion at his own reaction.
“You’re… different from Hannibal,” you said then, your voice softer now, almost contemplative.
“But also… similar.”
Will stilled.
“Similar?” he echoed carefully, eyes narrowing just slightly as he tried to read you through the gaps between your feathers.
You hesitated, then slowly lowered your wings enough for them to fall away from your body.
You sat on the bed properly now, knees drawn up, head resting against them.
When you looked at him again, it was directly.
Your eyes were dark in the dim light.
Too steady, too open in a way that made Will feel briefly like he was the one being examined instead.
Will swallowed once, slowly.
“…How?” he asked at last.
“Different… but similar?”
You glanced at your wings again, then at him, at the way his attention had already fixed itself there.
“You can touch them,” you said quietly.
Will’s eyes snapped up immediately, like he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been allowed to want.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted his hand.
It didn’t move with certainty so much as restraint, as though he expected the moment to turn against him.
His fingers hovered just above the edge of a feather.
“…You don’t mind?” he asked.
You shook your head. “Just be careful.”
You shifted slightly to give him space at the edge of the bed.
The movement slow and deliberate, wings adjusting behind you.
Will sat down.
The mattress dipped under his weight, and for a brief second the intimacy of it registered in his posture.
How close he was.
He exhaled once, steadying himself, before lowering his hand again.
When his fingers finally made contact, it was almost reverent.
A single feather beneath his touch.
He let his hand linger there, slowly tracing the length of it as though trying to confirm its reality.
You flinched.
It was small, involuntary.
Your wings tightened slightly around you before you could stop them.
“I’m sorry–” you said immediately, voice quieter now.
Will’s hand stilled at once.
He saw it clearly then.
The way your body had reacted before your words even followed.
Like something that had learned pain before it learned language.
“No,” he said quickly, softer now, recalibrating. “No, it’s okay. I’m not–”
His hand retreated a fraction, hovering again instead of withdrawing completely.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
You shook your head.
“No. It is just…”
You hesitated, searching for a way to explain something you still didn’t fully understand.
“I am not used to it.”
His fingers returned.
Slower this time.
More deliberate.
The way the feathers responded under his fingertips, the subtle sensitivity in your body that you couldn’t fully control, the faint tension that lingered in your muscles even when you stayed still, it all registered in him with unsettling focus.
Will exhaled slowly.
“…It’s warm,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
“Your wings…” Will murmured, almost absentminded now, eyes still fixed where his hand had just been.
“They’re beautiful.”
You glanced at him from behind them, feathers shifting slightly as you adjusted your posture.
“Thank you,” you said quietly. “They are… very big and heavy now that I am human.”
As if to demonstrate, you lifted your uninjured wing and slowly unfolded it as far as the room allowed.
It felt like the space could barely contain you.
The wing extended, impossibly large, spanning the bed and spilling into the air beyond it, feathers catching what little light there was and breaking it into something soft and unreal.
Too vast for the body it belonged to.
Too alive for something so still.
His eyes tracked every detail as though trying to memorize something he already knew he shouldn’t be looking at for too long.
His hand lifted again without permission, hovering near the edge of a primary feather.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” came a voice from the doorway.
Hannibal.
Will startled so sharply he pulled his hand back at once.
“Uh–yeah,” he said after a beat, clearing his throat. “Yeah. They are.”
Hannibal stood at the threshold, perfectly composed, watching the scene.
“I think it is late, Will,” he said mildly. “Isn’t it?”
You drew your wings back in slightly at that, folding them around yourself.
Your attention returned to Hannibal almost immediately, while Will remained just slightly outside of it.
Noticed, but not held.
Will checked his watch out of reflex.
The numbers confirmed what he already knew: time had slipped.
“Yeah,” he admitted, voice rougher now. “It is late.”
He stood, adjusting his jacket in a motion that felt too sharp, too suddenly aware of himself.
His eyes flicked back to you anyway, despite everything telling him to stop.
You were still there, seated on the bed, wings wrapped around you.
For a moment, he looked like he might say something else.
Instead, Hannibal’s hand settled lightly on his shoulder.
A gentle pressure. A correction.
“Come,” Hannibal said softly.
And Will moved.
Not immediately.
Not unwillingly.
But moved all the same.
At the door, he glanced back once more.
You hadn’t changed position.
You were still watching them go.
“Goodbye,” you said.
Something tightened in his chest at that.
An instinct he didn’t have a name for.
Not quite pity.
Not quite regret.
Something worse for its lack of clarity.
He wanted to turn back.
To say he would return.
But Hannibal guided him out before the thought could fully form into action.
The door closed.
A quiet click.
The hallway outside your room was too quiet after the door clicked shut.
Will walked slightly ahead at first, then slower, as though something had snagged on him and refused to let go.
Hannibal observed him without comment for several steps.
“You’re distracted,” Hannibal said at last, almost conversational.
Will gave a short exhale that might have been a laugh if it had contained any humour.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I am.”
Hannibal tilted his head slightly. “By what, exactly?”
Will didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze drifted back toward the closed bedroom door at the end of the hall, as if he could still see through it.
“…Her,” he said quietly. “...Them. I don’t know.”
Hannibal’s expression remained composed, but something subtle shifted beneath it.
“The angel,” he supplied gently.
Will hesitated at the word.
“If that’s what …they… are.”
Hannibal began walking again, guiding them down the stairs.
“What did you notice?” he asked, voice mild.
Will frowned slightly, thinking.
“It didn’t feel… like a person trying to be something,” he said at last. “More like something trying to learn how to be a person.”
That earned a faint pause from Hannibal.
Not surprise.
Interest.
“And how did that make you feel?” Hannibal asked.
Will’s jaw tightened. His answer came slower.
“Like they shouldn’t be alone in it.”
They reached the lower floor.
Hannibal studied him for a moment longer than necessary.
Then, softly: “You felt compassion.”
Will didn’t deny it.
Hannibal’s gaze drifted upward for the briefest instant.
Something like satisfaction settled quietly behind his ribs.
Not at Will’s empathy.
At what it could become.
“Yes,” Hannibal said at last, as if agreeing with an observation only he fully understood. “She inspires that.”
Then, almost thoughtfully: “And compassion, when nurtured… becomes attachment.”
Will glanced at him then, catching something in the tone that didn’t fully belong to kindness.
Hannibal met his gaze evenly, unreadable as ever.
“I wonder,” Hannibal continued softly, “how long it will take before she begins to understand that she is not the only one learning what she is made of.”
Will frowned. “What does that mean?”
But Hannibal had already turned away, adjusting his cuff as though the conversation had ended somewhere Will hadn’t noticed.
from heaven to earth to hell
pairing: hannibal lecter x fallen!angel!reader
genre: horror • angst
notes: winner of my recent poll!, you are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time... as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal...
warning: Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury
MINORS DNI!!
masterlist
join my taglist
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
part 3
“Would you allow me to help you bathe?”
You stayed silent for a long moment.
The question lingered in the air between you until you lifted your head.
“Bathe?” you asked quietly.
You knew the word. Of course you did. Angels knew many things.
They observed.
They understood the rituals of humanity.
But knowing something existed was not the same as understanding it.
Angels did not need to bathe.
Your gaze drifted slowly toward your wing.
Painfully, you lifted it again.
The feathers that had once gleamed like fresh snow now looked… wrong.
The white had dulled to a miserable gray where mud and soot clung stubbornly to them.
Blood had stiffened sections of the down, matting them into rough clumps that scratched against one another when you moved.
You stared at it with quiet disgust.
This body.
This mortal thing.
“Yes,” he said patiently.
His tone held the calm patience one might use when explaining a simple concept to a child.
And in some ways, you were one.
Newborn to the humiliations of flesh.
“Washing away the filth.”
His hand gestured loosely toward you.
Toward your wings.
Toward the dried blood along your arm.
“Snowmelt. Blood. Other contaminants.”
A polite way of saying what his eyes had already observed.
You smelled like death and wet feathers.
You looked like a drowned bird dragged from a gutter.
He waited.
Quietly.
Watching the slow ripple of shame move across your expression.
You frowned faintly.
You were not used to looking like this.
Once, your hair had fallen perfectly no matter how the winds carried you. Your feathers had been immaculate, soft, luminous, untouched by decay.
Now you were… this.
Dirty.
Heavy.
Wrong.
Slowly, you nodded.
You rose from the couch, careful with your wings as they dragged against the polished floor behind you.
“Alright.” you said quietly.
You looked at him with quiet uncertainty.
Waiting.
Hannibal rose as well.
He gestured calmly toward the hallway leading deeper into the house.
“The bathroom is through there.”
You followed him.
Your wings dragged softly behind you with each step.
The bathtub was already filling when you stepped inside the pristine bathroom.
Steam curled slowly into the air.
Hannibal stood beside the tub, testing the water with the inside of his wrist. He adjusted the temperature slightly.
Warmer, but not painfully so.
You watched him.
Everything he did seemed…
Precise.
Measured.
He placed a towel nearby.
Then a bottle of mild shampoo.
No perfumes.
When he turned back to you, his dark eyes studied you carefully.
“Would you like privacy?”
The question hung between you.
A courtesy.
Not necessity.
You did not see your body the way humans did.
You were an angel.
Your chest and hips were hidden beneath the soft curtain of feathers that grew along your form. There was nothing obscene about you.
Nothing shameful.
And yet…
Something inside you shifted.
A strange, fragile instinct.
Uncertainty.
You felt… exposed, lost even.
Like you yourself were beginning to sink your teeth into the apple.
Angels were created for love.
For worship.
For belonging.
And now you had nothing.
No voice of God.
No chorus of heaven.
Just this house.
And this man.
You hesitated.
“I don’t know…” you admitted softly.
Your voice sounded small.
You stepped closer to the bathtub.
Your hand slipped slowly into the water.
The sensation startled you.
Warm.
Soft.
It moved around your fingers like something alive.
For a brief moment you wondered if it might swallow you whole.
You liked it.
Carefully, you stepped into the tub.
Your wings made the process awkward.
Heavy as you lifted them over the porcelain edge before lowering yourself slowly into the water.
The warmth surrounded you.
Your feathers spread and nearly filled the entire tub.
You sat there quietly.
Adjusting.
Learning the strange weight of your body in water.
Behind you, Hannibal watched.
He observed the way the water darkened with mud and diluted blood as it slipped between your feathers.
After folding up his sleeves, he reached for a cloth, dipping it into the warm water and working a small amount of soap into it before extending it toward you.
You took the cloth slowly.
Your fingers closed around it before you dragged the damp fabric across your arm.
The sensation made you tense immediately.
Your brow creased.
The warmth of the water, the gentle drag of the cloth, the quiet movement of your own hands across your body.
It became… calming.
You cupped water in your palms and lifted it carefully, letting it spill through your hair.
The strands clung heavily to your shoulders as the water soaked through them.
The way you poured water over your hair felt less like bathing and more like a ritual.
A sacrament.
A baptism.
A baptism in the remains of your filthy fall from divinity.
The irony was clearly not lost to him.
He remained nearby but did not interfere.
Not yet.
Still, he noticed things.
You had not touched your wings.
Not once.
They laid behind you in the bath like wounded swans, the feathers dull with mud and dried blood.
His head tilted slightly.
The motion was small.
An unspoken question.
Do you need help?
You noticed.
Your gaze drifted toward him slowly.
Your hands sank back into the water, fingers disappearing beneath the surface as if surrendering the task entirely.
You were not sure what you had done wrong.
The gesture was enough and Hannibal accepted it.
He picked up the bottle of shampoo again and squeezed a small amount into his palm before rubbing it slowly between his fingers.
Then he stepped closer to the edge of the bath.
“May I?”
You did not answer.
You did not protest either.
Your silence was permission.
His hands moved to your hair.
The first touch of his fingers against your scalp made you inhale sharply.
Not from pain.
From something stranger.
His fingers moved slowly, working the soap into your hair in small, steady circles.
You leaned into the touch before you realized you were doing it.
Your body betrayed you.
Seeking warmth.
Seeking contact.
Seeking something to hold onto now that heaven had gone silent.
Hannibal noticed.
Of course he did.
His fingers continued their careful work through your damp hair.
The water shifted softly around you as you leaned closer to him.
A silent confession.
This felt good.
When the soap had spread through the strands, he cupped warm water in his hands and poured it slowly over your head, rinsing the foam away.
White bubbles slid down the curtain of your hair and vanished into the bathwater.
Eventually, your voice broke the silence.
“Why…” you asked softly, “Why is being human so painful?”
The question was genuine.
Hannibal paused.
One might have written entire volumes about such a question.
Mortality.
Fragility.
Nerves that screamed at the smallest injury.
Bones that broke.
Hearts that shattered.
But you had never known pain before.
You were learning it all at once.
Slowly, he resumed combing his fingers through your hair.
“Human bodies,” he said quietly, “were… imperfect.”
“They bruise easily. They ache from cold, from heat, from exhaustion.”
His fingers slid through the wet strands.
“But pain… is also how humans know they are alive.”
You had spent decades, centuries, your entire existence admiring humans.
They were God’s children, after all.
His beloved creations.
Angels had been made to watch them, guide them, keep the fragile balance of the world intact.
You had admired their imperfection.
Their freedom.
The strange gift of free will.
It was something angels did not possess.
You had been taught that human imperfection was beautiful.
Something sacred.
Something that allowed them to change and grow and evolve.
Angels did not change.
Angels remained the same.
For centuries.
For millennia.
For spans of time so vast they dissolved into eternity.
You had envied that ability to transform.
Still , ou had never imagined how painful it would feel to live inside it.
Now you sat in a porcelain bathtub in a stranger’s house, your body aching, your wings torn, your halo dim in your hands.
And suddenly the miracle of humanity felt less like a gift…
…and more like a punishment.
You said nothing.
You simply tried to understand.
All that admiration for human freedom…
Now confronted with its other half.
Mortality.
Fragility.
“It’s exhausting,” he said quietly.
He studied you for a moment before asking the next practical question.
“Should I wash your wings next?”
You hesitated.
But then you nodded.
The water in the tub had already turned cloudy from the dirt and blood that had washed from your feathers.
Hannibal nodded his head once in acknowledgment.
Carefully, he drained the water partially while turning on the tap again.
Then he reached for one wing.
He gathered the base of it gently in his hands where feather met skin.
Mud had hardened along the outer layers. Blood had clotted near the torn sections. Cleaning it would take time.
He dipped the cloth into the water again and began working carefully between the long feathers.
He cleaned without touching the deepest parts of the wound..
You sat quietly while he worked.
Sometimes your body flinched when he reached a tender spot. A small sound would slip from your throat before you could stop it.
But Hannibal treated you with the same care one might give to restoring a fragile work of art.
Patient.
Attentive.
A few feathers loosened under his careful cleaning.
They drifted slowly into the bathwater.
Their tips were stained a strange dark color, not mud, not blood.
Something else.
You did not notice yet.
You were too focused on the halo in your hands.
Hannibal noticed the fallen feathers immediately.
His gaze lingered on them for a moment.
Blackened edges…
Interesting.
But he said nothing.
Eventually the first wing was clean.
The feathers gleamed white again, though exhaustion weighed heavily through your shoulders from holding still for so long.
Without thinking, you ruffled it.
The motion was instinctive.
Unfortunately for Hannibal…
It was very similar to the way a dog shook itself after a bath.
Water sprayed everywhere.
Across the marble floor.
Across the mirror.
Across Hannibal’s perfectly neat shirt.
Droplets clung to his hair.
Ran down the collar of his clothing.
You froze.
A moment too late.
“…I’m sorry…!” you said quietly, glancing over your shoulder.
Hannibal blinked once.
Then again.
Water dripped from a strand of hair near his temple.
For a moment he simply stood there.
Then the faintest shift touched the corner of his mouth.
Not quite a smile.
But something dangerously close to one.
“No harm done.” he said calmly.
He reached for a towel, drying his hands and collar before draining the bath.
Fresh water filled the tub again.
And the process began once more with your other wing.
This time you resisted the urge to shake it when he finished.
When it was finally done, the water drained away for the last time.
You stepped carefully out of the bathtub.
The now cool feeling air brushed against your skin as you stood dripping on the marble floor.
Your reflection caught your attention.
You turned slowly toward the mirror.
For a moment you did not recognize the figure staring back at you.
Your hair hung around your shoulders.
Your feathers were bright again, soft, luminous despite the tear in one wing that still marked where you had fallen.
You looked almost the way you once had.
Almost.
Except for the halo.
You still held it in your hands.
The empty space above your head felt… wrong.
The creature in the mirror looked divine.
And yet unmistakably human.
Pain had already etched faint shadows beneath your eyes.
Your posture was a bit slouched as you carried the unfamiliar weight of… everything.
But something else had changed as well.
You were clean.
Taken care of.
For the first time since you had struck the earth.
Hope?
False hope, perhaps… but still hope.
Behind you, Hannibal took a towel and began drying your hair.
The halo remained clutched in your hands.
Dim.
So dim.
“You are very kind,” you said softly.
Hannibal’s hands stilled.
Just for half a second.
Kind.
The word hovered in the steam-thick air like something misplaced.
Few people had ever described him that way.
Intelligent, yes.
Cultured.
Composed.
Dangerous.
But kind?
His fingers resumed their careful work through your hair.
“It’s basic decency.” he replied quietly.
As though bathing a fallen angel were merely another polite obligation in a long list of daily human tasks.
The following silence between you didn’t feel uncomfortable.
If anything, it felt strangely… intimate.
Your brow furrowed slightly as a thought surfaced again.
“I don’t understand,” you said slowly.
“You are kind,” you continued, glancing toward him in the mirror, “but when I saw you at the window…”
You hesitated.
Your divine senses had been fading even then, but the impression had been strong enough to linger.
“You smelled like decay.”
Your voice held no accusation, only confusion.
One of the last things your angelic perception had managed to grasp before it began to die.
Hannibal’s fingers stopped entirely this time.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, considering his answer.
“Some call me a monster,” he said at last.
You nodded faintly.
Humans sinned.
That was not new knowledge.
You had watched them for centuries.
You had believed, perhaps foolishly, that eventually they changed.
That their mistakes softened, their cruelty faded, their souls bent slowly toward forgiveness.
Angels believed in redemption and good more than anything else.
“It’s okay,” you said certainly, “You’ll be forgiven for your sins.”
You meant it kindly.
But Hannibal found it almost amusing.
‘Forgiven.’
He had chosen every sin he carried.
Carefully.
Deliberately.
And he had enjoyed them.
But correcting you now felt… unnecessary.
You wouldn’t understand… not yet.
So he said nothing.
When he finished, you slid down to sit on the bathroom rug, petting them dry with the towel.
For the most part, you were still naked.
At least by human standards.
White feathers covered your chest and the curve of your lower stomach, soft plumage between your thighs providing what modesty standards went by in heaven.
But to a human eye, you were unmistakably unclothed.
Hannibal didn’t comment.
Instead, he guided you gently out of the bathroom.
Toward the living room.
Hannibal gestured lightly toward the couch.
A quiet invitation.
No command.
No urgency.
Just a subtle motion of his hand.
You obeyed without question, lowering yourself back onto the dark leather cushions.
Your wings followed after you with slow, heavy movement, spilling over the couch and onto the floor on either side.
You curled inward instinctively, drawing your knees up toward your chest.
The halo remained clutched in your hands.
You had not let it go since the fall.
Across from you, Hannibal settled into his armchair. He took the glass of bourbon back into his hand, the one you had seen him pour.
Hannibal watched you quietly.
He did not attempt conversation.
Silence, he believed, was often the most revealing environment for a wounded mind.
You sat there for a long time.
Your gaze fixed on the dim halo in your palms.
The weight of your body felt unfamiliar.
You had slept before, in heaven, but only out of idle curiosity.
Never because you needed to.
Never because your body demanded it.
This was different.
A slow exhaustion seeped into you, your eyelids began to sink.
Your head tipped slowly against the couch arm.
You fell asleep still clutching the broken ring of your halo.
Across the room, Hannibal did not move.
At first.
He simply observed.
An angel.
Sleeping on his couch.
The thought should have felt absurd.
Instead, it felt… fascinating.
The glass clicked softly as he set it down.
Hannibal rose from his chair.
His steps were quiet as he approached.
Careful curiosity.
For rare specimens that presented themselves only once in a lifetime.
You were beautiful in a strange, broken way.
And those wings…
They were magnificent.
Even damaged.
Hannibal crouched beside the couch.
His gaze followed the torn line of your injured wing.
He reached out slowly.
Two fingers brushed along a primary feather near the wound.
You didn’t stir.
Encouraged, he continued.
His fingertips moved carefully through the feathers.
Some were still pristine white.
Others…
At the very edges, grey.
A faint discoloration creeping into the tips.
Curious.
He tilted his head slightly, studying the first symptoms of an unfamiliar disease.
Then he gently lifted the wing.
The weight of it was substantial.
Not merely decorative.
Functional.
Impressive.
He examined the full span with quiet appreciation before folding it back carefully into place beside you.
For a moment he simply looked at your sleeping face.
You had trusted him.
That much was clear.
Hannibal’s hand hovered again.
Lower now.
Near the base of your wing where the feathers thinned and skin became visible.
Your body reacted instantly.
A sharp inhale caught in your throat.
Your wings twitched.
And your eyes snapped open.
You jolted upright with a startled sound as your gaze locked onto him.
Your breath came uneven.
Confused.
Disoriented.
For a moment neither of you spoke.
Hannibal did not look guilty.
He did not look surprised.
“You fell asleep,” he said simply.
You blinked at him, trying to orient yourself.
Your heart was beating strangely fast.
Your stomach twisted in an unfamiliar way.
You rubbed your temple faintly.
“…Sorry,” you murmured, voice thick with sleep.
Had he touched you?
You couldn’t quite remember.
Maybe you had dreamed it.
You sank back against the pillow slowly, trying to steady your breathing.
“I just… felt something strange,” you explained quietly.
Hannibal’s expression remained composed.
He stepped away from the couch and retrieved his glass again, pouring another measure of bourbon with slow precision.
You watched him for a moment longer before your eyes drifted closed again, exhaustion still tugging at your body.
His gaze lingered on your wings.
On the creeping grey at their edges.
Yes.
This would be very interesting to observe.
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
taglist . . .‧˚꒰📞꒱༘‧
@ilovehorror-18
from heaven to earth to hell
pairing: hannibal lecter x fallen!angel!reader
genre: horror • angst
notes: winner of my recent poll!, you are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time... as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal...
warning: Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury
MINORS DNI!!
masterlist
join my taglist
─── ꒰ 🩵 ꒱ ───
part 2
Your wings dragged behind you as Hannibal settled you onto the couch.
The sound they made was soft but unpleasant, feathers scraping faintly against the polished floor before spilling over the edge of the cushions. Snow melted slowly, dampening the pristine white into clumps of gray.
He noticed, of course he did.
A faint crease appeared between his brows as he studied the way your wings were long—much longer than they had appeared outside when folded tightly against your body.
Now he saw their true scale.
When unfolded, they must have been enormous.
Magnificent.
And ruined.
You didn’t resist him anymore.
The fight seemed to have drained from you somewhere between the freezing garden and the suffocating warmth of the house.
Your body shifted carefully on the couch as you adjusted your position, moving slowly so the heavy wings growing from your back weren’t crushed beneath your weight.
The movement was awkward.
Unnatural.
The heat from the fireplace spread across your skin in slow waves.
And then something strange happened.
Your brow furrowed.
Your shoulders twitched slightly.
The warmth tingled.
It crawled across your skin in a thousand tiny, prickling sensations that made your breath hitch in confusion.
Your body reacted to it instinctively, nerves awakening to something they had never been meant to feel.
You stared at your own hands.
Heat.
You were feeling heat.
Hannibal watched the change in your expression carefully.
Confusion.
Discomfort.
Wonder.
How strange, he thought quietly, to experience warmth for the first time.
He turned away from you and moved toward a shelf near the wall. Hidden among neatly arranged books and decorative objects sat a small medical kit.
He retrieved it.
Antiseptic.
Clean gauze.
A pair of medical scissors.
When he knelt beside the couch again, the supplies rested neatly in his hands.
“May I clean your wing?”
Your response came immediately.
“No.”
The word was soft, barely more than a breath.
There was no strength behind it.
No real resistance.
Your eyes dropped back down to the object still clutched tightly in your hands.
The halo.
Its glow flickered weakly against your palms.
“I need to fix this first…” you whispered
Hannibal paused, ah, so that was where your true concern lied.
Not the torn flesh.
Not the bleeding wing.
The halo.
You cradled it against your chest like a dying heart.
He studied the faint cracks running through the ring. The dimming light within it pulsed unevenly, like something alive that was slowly losing the will to continue.
Interesting.
He set the medical supplies aside for the moment.
Curiosity outweighed practicality.
“How,” Hannibal asked slowly, “do you fix it?”
If you believed it could be repaired… then perhaps there was a method.
Or perhaps the answer lay beyond anything a human mind could understand.
Your throat tightened.
Those horrible, wet tears gathered in your eyes again.
You closed them quickly, pressing the halo tighter against your chest.
“I don’t know…”
The sob escaped you quietly.
Raw.
Broken.
The sound hung in the room like something fragile shattering.
An angel crying.
The irony was almost beautiful.
This divine being reduced to the same helpless grief as the creatures they once watched from above.
After a moment of hesitation, he reached out.
Slowly.
Carefully.
His hand came to rest atop your head.
Large.
Warm.
Heavy.
It might almost have resembled comfort.
A paternal gesture, perhaps.
Though his expression remained unreadable.
“You’ll figure it out.”
Then he withdrew his hand and picked up the medical supplies again.
You did not stop him this time.
Not because you wanted his touch.
But because you simply didn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.
You buried your face against the halo, sobbing quietly into the dimming light.
The tears did nothing.
The glow continued to weaken.
And with every passing moment you felt it more clearly, your divine presence fading from you piece by piece.
Pain replaced it.
Your wings ached.
The torn flesh burned like an open wound across a limb.
Because that was what they were.
Your wings were not decorations.
They were part of you.
To cut one open was like slicing into an arm.
Perhaps worse.
And they were filthy.
Snow.
Mud.
Blood clotted between feathers.
Folded as they are, the wound is trapped in damp warmth, the perfect place for infection.
The tear ran along your feathers.
The trembling of your body.
The useless tears.
Those could not help you.
But the wound?
That he could fix.
Without asking again, he carefully lifted your injured wings.
The movement was slow, maneuvering the enormous limb so he could reach the wound.
The feathers rustled softly.
They were surprisingly soft beneath his hands.
Luxurious.
Almost decadent.
You shifted forward instinctively, leaning onto your stomach as you allowed him access to the wound.
While your clean feathers felt like silk.
The damaged ones were stiff and sticky with blood.
The moment the antiseptic reached the torn flesh…
You gasped.
Your wing jerked violently.
Pain shot through you like lightning.
The twitch was immediate.
Hannibal did not stop.
Disinfecting wounds required contact.
Pain was unavoidable.
His hands remained steady as he worked, carefully cleaning away dirt and clotted blood from the edges of the tear.
The deeper he went, the sharper the sting became.
Another broken sound escaped you.
The sound was so devastating and desperate, this time he paused.
Just briefly.
Then he continued.
Your eyes peeked over the curve of your wing.
The feathers trembled where they shielded you, rising and falling with your uneven breaths. Through them, you watched him.
Your vision was blurry.
Too wide.
Too bright.
Everything felt too much.
Pain spread through your wing in deep, pulsing waves. Like something alive beneath your skin.
You had always known pain existed.
You had watched humans suffer it.
You had understood it the way angels understood all mortal things.
But knowing was not the same as feeling.
Now it was inside you.
Your throat tightened as Hannibal pressed deeper into the wound.
Another broken sound escaped you before you could stop it.
Your body curled inward instinctively, like a wounded animal trying to hide its injured limb.
But there was relief inside it too.
A strange, terrible relief.
Your breath stuttered.
Whines and soft, helpless whimpers sliped from your throat before you could swallow them down.
There was nothing divine about the sounds you made.
Nothing holy.
Just pain.
Hannibal felt your wing resist.
The muscles tensed beneath his hands, the enormous limb trying to fold itself shut around the injury.
His grip tightened slightly.
Not rough.
But firm enough to keep the wing open.
“Easy.” he said.
He worked slowly.
Almost patiently.
Cleaning a wound like this could not be rushed.
Each careful dab of antiseptic drew another sharp breath from you, another trembling shudder through your body.
Until suddenly…
His fingers reached a deeper section of torn flesh.
Your entire body jerked violently.
The couch creaked beneath you.
Your hand grabbed blindly at something, and found the edge of the cushion. Your fingers dug into the fabric, clutching it as if it might aid you against the surge of sensation ripping through your wing.
Your wing snapped back from his grasp.
“I– it–!”
Your voice fractured into useless fragments.
You had no language for this.
Pain had words among humans: burning, stabbing, throbbing.
You only had feeling.
Feeling for the very first time.
Hannibal set the antiseptic bottle aside as you pulled your wing away so violently.
Your chest heaved as you gasped for air.
“Breathe.” he instructed calmly.
Your lungs obeyed before your mind did.
You drew in shaky breaths, each one deeper than the last. Slowly, your wing loosened from its defensive curl.
Hannibal waited.
Only when the feathers relaxed slightly did he attempt to touch near the wound again.
But your body tensed instantly.
You pulled the wing away again.
“I– I can heal–” you sniffled.
The delusional lie came out weak and desperate.
Even as you said it, you knew.
You had known the moment you hit the earth.
Your divine power was gone.
Or leaving you.
Or dying.
Still you clung to the illusion.
Your trembling hands lifted the halo above your head, trying to place it where it belonged. Where it used to sit, hovering effortlessly above your crown.
For a moment…
It worked.
The halo floated.
Weakly.
Unsteadily.
Its light flickered like a dying candle.
Then gravity took it.
The ring dropped.
You caught it desperately before it could fall.
Your hands shook around it.
“Why…” your voice cracked softly, “won’t it work…?”
Hannibal watched the pathetic attempt with quiet interest.
You clung to the lie of healing.
To the belief that this was temporary.
Some divine mistake.
This was no longer about a wound.
Something deeper was breaking inside you.
Slowly, he reached forward again, but not toward your wing.
Toward your hands.
His fingers hovered near the halo you clutched so desperately.
“It might be gone.” he said quietly.
You shook your head immediately.
No.
It could not be gone.
Heaven would not abandon you like this.
Would they?
Your eyes lifted to his, wide and wet.
You held the halo out toward him.
“Can you fix it…?” you asked softly.
The request was almost childlike.
Hopeful.
Hannibal studied the object carefully.
Cracks spread across its surface like fractures in a mirror.
The light inside it flickered weakly.
He was a psychiatrist.
A surgeon.
A man of flesh and bone.
“I don’t think,” he said carefully, “that this is something medicine can fix.”
Silence settled between you.
Then he added quietly,
“It might require… something else.”
“What else…?”
Hannibal paused.
Prayer?
Divine intervention?
He did not know.
But one thing seemed entirely clear to him, whatever power had once fed your halo, was no longer reaching you.
Crushing that hope entirely would have been easy. But… a part of him wondered how long he could drag it out.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “it required a connection to what gave it power in the first place.”
A vague answer.
Your broken halo flickered in your hands and your eyes looked at it with utter hope.
And Hannibal watched you like studying something both beautiful… and terribly doomed.
“God?” you whispered.
The word felt strange in your mouth now. Heavy. Mortal.
God.
Love.
Worship.
Concepts he had dismissed long ago. Yet here you were: a fallen angel sitting on his couch.
His head tilted slightly. The movement was slow, thoughtful, predatory in its patience.
“If that is the case,” he said calmly, “perhaps your halo requires faith to sustain it now.”
You sniffled quietly, your throat tightening.
“I… I have faith,” you defended yourself.
“I believe in God,” you whispered. “I love God but…”
Your voice broke at the sheer blasphemy of your next words, “But I think maybe they don’t love me anymore.”
Silence settled in the room.
Hannibal listened.
An angel doubting divine love.
There was both poetry and irony in that.
“Love should not be conditional.” he said simply.
Your head throbbed.
The pain pulsed, deep in your skull.
The human body was a cruel vessel, full of nerves and weakness and hunger.
“It is…” you whispered.
Your legs drew upward. Your arms wrapped around them, wings folding inward as if to hide you from the room, from him, from everything.
You pressed your forehead against your knees.
Ugly. Crying. Mortal.
You felt contaminated by it.
Once you had sat among the stars, watching over all mortal beings.
Now you trembled like a wounded animal in a stranger’s house.
Tears. Trembling limbs. A migraine blooming like rot inside your skull.
Human.
Hannibal watched you intently.
How humiliating it must have been.
This was what you were now.
He let his hand touch you once again, resting, simply resting, against your back. Not your wings, but your skin.
You flinched.
Your skin had never known contact like this before.
Hannibal stilled immediately.
His hand did not press or move.
It simply… stayed.
A presence.
A test.
Would you tolerate touch if it asked nothing of you?
If it merely remained?
You did not pull away.
But your wings shifted, folding tighter around you as they wrapped around your body like a shield.
You trembled.
You looked like a statue abandoned in a cemetery garden.
An angel carved from marble and forgotten beneath the weather.
Your feathers were filthy.
Blood had dried along the edges.
Dirt clung stubbornly to the white.
Hannibal noticed everything.
It was… unpleasant.
Unsanitary.
And aesthetically offensive.
His hand withdrew.
Very well.
No touching.
For now.
But the condition of you could not remain like this.
It was degrading.
And Hannibal had always had very particular standards.
✦ ──── FALLEN
from heaven to earth to hell
hannibal lecter x will graham x fallen!angel!reader
masterlist — taglist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
wc. 4.8 k
premise.
You are an angel that was just kicked from heaven, in the middle of the night you make your way aimlessly around until you are found by hannibal, who invites you in; you are just losing your divine powers, experiencing being human for the first time… as an angel you see the good in human, or were taught to, and gaining your trust is easy for hannibal…
warnings.
Dead dove don't eat!!!; dark fic, descriptive violence, blood, injury, forced intoxication, drugs
MINORS DNI!!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
part 7
Will woke before he fully understood why.
He woke up with that uneasy half-conscious awareness that something in the house had changed...
Outside, something was breathing.
A sound too broken to be human. Too wet to be animal.
A whimper, drawn out and trembling, followed by a low groan.
For a moment, Will’s mind reached for the most ordinary explanation.
One of the dogs injured itself.
Caught in something outside.
A fence.
A branch.
He was already sitting up before he fully opened his eyes.
But then he remembered.
You were there.
On the couch.
Sleeping in the living room.
The sound came again.
Closer, now.
Will swung his feet to the floor.
The house felt wrong in the dark, not unfamiliar, but rearranged.
He moved, bare feet silent against the floorboards, his hand already reaching for the shotgun he kept locked more out of habit than expectation.
His fingers knew the weight of it before his mind fully agreed with the decision.
Another sound outside.
A low, agonised exhale.
Then, something that made his stomach tighten so sharply it hurt.
A scrape.
Wood or bone.
Something dragging across the outside wall of the house.
Will reached the back door.
He hesitated there only a second.
The door opened and cold air rushed in like something alive.
The backyard stretched out in pale, moonwashed silence, the snow reflecting a light that did not feel natural anymore.
The forest beyond the fence looked too dense, too still, as if it were watching back through the trees.
And then he saw it.
Antlers.
Impossibly still.
Will’s grip tightened around the shotgun before he even realised he had raised it.
The stag was back.
Or it had never left.
He stepped forward.
Snow crunched under his weight, loud in the unnatural quiet.
The antlers shifted slightly.
Toward him.
Will’s breath sharpened.
Anger rose before logic could stop it.
“Not here,” he muttered under his breath, though he wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to it or to himself.
He moved again.
Closer.
The shape took form.
Not deer.
Not entirely.
Something standing where no animal should stand upright for so long without moving.
And then…
It changed.
The antlers seemed to multiply in his vision, branching further, heavier, impossibly intricate, like they were growing even as he watched. Feathers caught in them, white feathers, stained at the edges with something dark.
Dirt? Blood? He couldn’t tell anymore.
His vision blurred at the edges.
The stag tilted its head.
And Will saw you.
Or what his mind insisted was you.
Standing in the snow where the animal should have been.
Barely upright.
Shaking.
Your wings were there, too large for your body, dragging slightly as if they no longer obeyed you.
White feathers matted, some clumped together with dark, wet streaks that slid down your skin.
And from your head…
Antlers.
Not grown cleanly, not beautifully.
Wrong.
Jagged where they broke through skin. Dark at the base. Wet.
Blood ran down your face in thin, trembling lines.
Your expression was not calm.
It was not divine.
It was pain.
Raw, silent, uncomprehending agony.
As though something inside you was still trying to reject what was happening to your body and failing.
A sound left you again.
That same whimper.
Human.
Animal.
Neither.
Will’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“No,” he said sharply, though it came out more like breath than word.
The shotgun wavered.
Because you looked at him.
And your eyes
For a fraction of a second
were not monstrous.
They were pleading.
Confused.
Familiar.
Will’s heartbeat thundered in his ears, drowning out everything else.
The stag.
The angel.
The thing that shouldn’t exist standing in his backyard bleeding into the snow.
The stag.
The angel.
A second voice appeared somewhere behind his thoughts.
As if Hannibal were standing just outside the frame of his vision, watching him decide what you were.
What you had become.
What you would become next.
Will didn’t lower the gun.
But he didn’t fire either.
The whispering didn’t stop.
The stag.
The angel.
The stag.
The angel.
The stag, the antlers, the blood in the snow.
All of it hanging at the edge of perception like a thought he couldn’t quite finish.
Will’s finger stayed on the trigger anyway.
His breath came in shallow pulls.
Your face dripped with a familiar red, tilting as your eyes stared at him, stared into the barrel of his shotgun.
And then–
“Will.”
Right behind him.
Will turned so fast the snow beneath his feet crunched loudly, almost making him slip.
The gun came up instinctively before his mind caught up with what he was seeing.
But there was no stag.
No antlers.
No blood.
Only you.
Standing there in the pale, early morning light.
A blanket was draped loosely around your shoulders, slipping slightly as you shifted your weight, feathers peeking out beneath it.
Your hair was mussed from sleep and your dark eyes were still sleepy, half focused on him.
Will blinked once, then again, he turned from where you stood in the doorway to look at the yard again, it was empty.
Only snow.
Only fence.
“What are you doing?” you asked softly.
Your voice was careful, curious even.
Will lowered the shotgun a fraction, though his grip didn’t fully loosen.
His eyes flicked once more across the yard, searching for something…
“I…” His voice broke slightly.
“I thought…”
He halted, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t sound insane.
You took a small step closer.
The blanket shifted again, sliding down your arm as you looked at him properly now, head tilted.
The shotgun finally lowered completely.
Will exhaled sharply, and before he could think better of it, he stepped forward and pulled you into him.
It was immediate relief, almost desperate, to feel that you, at least you, were something real.
His arms wrapped around you tightly, face pressing briefly into your shoulder.
“You’re okay,” he breathed, more to himself than to you.
“You’re fine...”
His grip tightened for a second, then loosened slightly as he pulled back just enough to look at you again, eyes scanning your face, your wings, your hands, searching for any sign of what he had just seen.
“I thought…” he started again, then shook his head slightly, swallowing the rest of the sentence.
His voice lowered, rough with lingering adrenaline, “Never mind...”
You stood there for a moment longer, still trying to understand Will and his behaviour.
His breathing was uneven.
His eyes kept flicking back toward the trees, toward the fence, as if expecting for something to appear.
“Will?” you asked again quietly.
“It’s nothing,” he said at last, though the words didn’t sound entirely like belief.
“Just… a dream.”
You tilted your head slightly, feathers shifting beneath the blanket.
But before you could ask anything else…
The doorbell rang.
The sound cut cleanly through the house.
The dogs erupted immediately, barking and scrambling inside, nails skittering across the floorboards as they rushed toward the source of the noise.
Your attention snapped toward the house at once.
Something in you brightened.
Recognition.
Hope.
Want.
Will exhaled through his nose, some of the tension in his posture shifting.
He muttered something under his breath, that you didn’t quite catch before already moving into the house.
You followed a half-step behind him without thinking.
The excitement building in your chest didn’t have a clear explanation, but it didn’t need one.
Lately, certain presences had begun to feel… familiar in a way you couldn’t fully articulate.
Like patterns your mind was learning to recognise without having the vocabulary for them yet.
The door opened.
Cold air slipped inside for a brief moment before being replaced by something warmer.
Hot.
Hannibal stood on the threshold.
Composed as ever.
Immaculate coat.
Calm eyes that took in the scene.
Will was still a little tense, the dogs circling in excitement, and you just behind him, wrapped in a blanket.
“Good morning,” Hannibal said smoothly, his gaze briefly settling on Will before shifting to you.
It lingered there a fraction longer, measured, attentive, almost indulgent.
The dogs barked again, circling his legs.
You stepped forward before you could stop yourself.
The sight of him did something strange to your chest.
Warmth, relief, attention all folding into each other too quickly to separate.
“You came…” you said softly.
Hannibal’s expression softened just slightly at that, the smallest curve of approval in his gaze.
“I said I would,” he replied.
The house had settled into silence once more.
Outside, snow drifted lazily across the windows, softening the world beyond the glass until it became little more than pale shapes swallowed by darkness.
In his study, Hannibal finished the final sentence of his notes.
The tip of his pen scratched quietly across thick cream paper before coming to a stop.
He set the pen neatly beside the journal.
Only then did he look up.
His eyes settled on the doorway, almost by accident.
He paused, you were standing there.
For an instant, he mistook you for one of the stone angels that decorated forgotten cemeteries.
You stood so perfectly still that you scarcely seemed alive.
Your skin looked almost greyish beneath the dim light spilling from the study, your face hidden beneath layers of shadow.
Your wings hung heavily behind you, feathers brushing the hardwood floor without the slightest movement.
Only your eyes betrayed you.
Two faint points of reflected light.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hannibal rarely found himself surprised.
Yet even he could not remember hearing you approach.
He folded his hands together, “Evening.”
He greeted you.
Slowly, your head lifted.
“Hannibal.” you spoke, your voice distant, absent.
He noticed the shine beneath your eyes.
You sniffled once, quietly, as though you had been crying for some time.
“Do you need something?” he asked.
You remained silent.
The grandfather clock somewhere in the hallway ticked twice before you finally answered, “I feel... strange.”
Hannibal studied you for another moment before speaking, “Come here.”
You didn’t hesitate, crossing the room with slow, heavy steps, until you stood beside his chair.
He leaned back into the dark leather, one arm resting comfortably along the chair's side.
“Sit.”
Again, you obeyed without question.
You lowered yourself carefully into his lap.
For a moment you remained stiff, uncertain what was expected of you.
Then, you leaned into him.
Your forehead rested lightly against his shoulder.
He felt your breathing before anything else.
Slow.
Uneven.
One of his hands came to rest lightly against the middle of your back.
The enormous white feathers lifted, unfolding around the both of you until they enclosed the chair like the walls of some great nest.
The study disappeared behind layers of soft plumage, leaving only the two of you in the cocoon of your feathers.
It was almost like you coiled against him, kept him close because you couldn’t fathom not having him for yourself.
Then the tension seemed to leave your body all at once.
Your wings slowly loosened.
The feathers slipped downward.
One by one they settled against the hardwood floor, pooling behind the chair like an enormous white cloak.
Hannibal felt the change immediately.
You had relaxed.
“What happened?” Hannibal tried.
You stayed silent.
“You were crying?”
Again, silence.
You seemed unable, or perhaps unwilling, to explain it.
Instead, you only curled slightly closer.
Interesting.
Without disturbing you, Hannibal reached toward the corner of his desk where a crystal water jug rested beside a matching glass.
He poured carefully.
The water caught the warm lamplight as it filled the glass.
Then he opened one of the desk drawers.
Inside lay an orderly collection of papers, fountain pens, and several small amber bottles.
His fingers selected one.
He removed a single pale tablet.
Without ceremony, he dropped it into the water.
The tablet struck the bottom with a soft click before clouds of white slowly unfurled through the glass.
You watched it, fascinated.
“What is it?” you asked softly.
“Something to help you rest.”
The water continued to cloud.
“It will help with this strange feeling.”
He offered you the glass.
You accepted it automatically, without even thinking twice.
Yet as you looked into the cloudy water, you hesitated for a brief second.
Your eyes lifted back up to Hannibal, fingers tightening around the cool crystal.
Hannibal's expression remained calm, patient, watching you, only you.
“There is nothing to fear.”
You glanced back down at the drink and then back at his face.
He could almost see the unfamiliar instinct blooming inside you.
Not suspicion.
Simply uncertainty.
He rested one hand gently over yours, “Go on. It will make you feel better.”
The words settled over you, making that pit in your stomach feel hot and heavy again.
You looked at him for another long moment before giving a tiny nod.
Then you raised the glass.
The first swallow made you flinch slightly at the bitter taste.
You almost lowered it again.
Hannibal's hand remained steady over yours.
“That's it.”
His voice was warm.
“You are doing good.”
You obeyed.
Another swallow.
Then another.
Until the glass was nearly empty.
He tilted it gently, encouraging the final mouthful.
“There…”
You swallowed one last time before lowering the empty glass into your lap.
A faint cough escaped you.
Hannibal took the glass from your hands and placed it quietly upon the desk.
His fingers lingered beneath your chin for only a moment before brushing a loose strand of hair away from your face.
“You did so well.”
The praise made your shoulders loosen, made the tightness leave your expression.
Your eyelids felt strangely heavy now.
You leaned further into him without realising you had done so, your head resting beneath his chin.
“I still feel…” you murmured sleepily.
“...strange.”
"I know."
His hand moved slowly through your hair, soothing.
“You've changed more in a few days than most people do in an entire lifetime.” Hannibal complimented, or at least it sounded like a compliment.
Your breathing deepened, another white feather drifted silently from your wing.
It landed at Hannibal's feet.
Its tip had darkened.
He noticed.
And he smiled, almost imperceptibly, as he continued to hold you while the house blurred into nothing around you.
Despite the unfamiliar sleep haunting you, you didn’t feel uneasy.
Hannibal was here.
Hannibal was holding you.
Hannibal praised you.
Hannibal knew what was right.
Hannibal knew.
You woke with a scream that never reached your throat.
The world was white.
Not Heaven's white.
This white was clinical.
Merciless.
Light flooded your vision until it burned, reflecting off polished metal.
Slowly, painfully, shapes emerged from the brightness.
The room.
Cold metal pressed against your back.
The familiar table.
The straps.
You couldn't feel them, but somehow you knew they were there.
Your body refused to obey you.
You tried to lift your hand.
Nothing.
Tried to spread your wings.
Nothing.
Only the frantic pounding of your heart answered.
The room tilted.
The ceiling spun.
Everything swam together into pale streaks until one shape remained fixed above you.
Hannibal.
Hannibal.
Hannibal.
Hannibal.
Hannibal.
Hannibal.
He stood over you, blurred by tears and dizziness, his features softened into something almost unreal. His face drifted in and out of focus as though submerged beneath water.
You couldn't make out his expression.
Only his eyes.
Watching.
Always watching.
“H…”
Your lips barely moved as you tried to force out a sound that immediately dissolved into a broken whimper.
Your body felt impossibly heavy.
Then it began again.
Not pain directly.
Something worse.
It started somewhere deep inside your chest.
A slow, unbearable pull.
Like invisible hands had reached beneath your ribs and wrapped themselves around something sacred.
They pulled.
You gasped.
The sensation spread through every inch of you.
It felt like your divinity itself was being ripped from your insides.
Pulled away because it did no longer belong to you.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Like roots being ripped from frozen earth.
You cried out.
This time your voice escaped.
“Hannibal…”
Your vision blurred completely.
Tears spilled endlessly down your face.
“It hurts…”
The words fractured into sobs.
“It... hurts…”
You had never known pain like this.
Not the wound in your wing.
Not the surgery.
Not hunger or cold or anything.
Those belonged to the body.
This belonged to the soul.
It felt as though every prayer you had ever spoken, every hymn you had ever sung, every fragment of celestial light that had once lived inside you was dying.
Dying.
You wept harder.
The pressure intensified.
Something inside you seemed to snap.
You felt it.
A thread stretched across eternity finally breaking.
Your entire body arched helplessly against the metal table.
Then…
Warmth.
That warmth again.
It bloomed low in your abdomen.
Sudden.
Violent.
A heat that spread outward through your body in slow waves.
Your voice broke into another sob.
Above you, the blurred figure leaned closer.
This time you saw his smile.
Small.
Gentle.
Almost affectionate.
It comforted you.
The warmth inside your body flared brighter.
It spread through your veins like molten gold.
Like liquid fire.
You cried again.
The sensation wasn't painful.
It was consuming.
Foreign.
Heavy.
Alive.
The fire wrapped around your muscles.
Curled through your lungs.
Settled somewhere deep inside your stomach.
You writhed weakly upon the table, helpless little sounds escaping between ragged breaths.
Your wings trembled violently against the steel beneath you.
“Hannibal…”
You didn't know whether you were begging him to stop...
or begging him not to leave.
The warmth became unbearable.
Brighter.
Hotter.
Until–
You jolted upright.
Air rushed into your lungs.
Your entire body shook.
You stared.
At a ceiling.
Wooden beams crossed above you, washed in soft grey dawn.
No restraints.
No blood.
Only silence.
Your breathing came fast and uneven as you lay tangled beneath a thick feather duvet.
This wasn't your room.
The bed was unfamiliar.
Larger.
The linen smelled faintly of cedarwood, old books... and something medicinal.
For several long seconds, you simply stared upward.
Listening.
Your heart still hammered against your ribs.
Your stomach ached.
Just enough to make your hand drift toward it.
Your fingertips rested there.
Nothing.
Only warm skin beneath your palm.
Something inside you felt different than it had yesterday.
Emptier.
As though a great choir that had once sung somewhere beyond your hearing had finally fallen silent.
You swallowed.
The room felt still.
Then, you heard footsteps moving.
Unhurried.
Approaching.
The footsteps stopped outside the door.
For a moment, there was only silence.
Then the handle turned.
Hannibal appeared in the doorway.
You felt the same excitement as you felt that morning.
Like he had come back for you.
Warmth spread inside you again.
Your eyes immediately found him.
You looked at him expectantly, even if the room still spun around you.
“Come here.” Hannibal's voice rang, a quiet command.
There was no harsh force in his words but your body reacted before your mind did.
You pushed the blankets aside and moved to stand.
The moment your feet touched the floor, the room shifted.
The walls stretched.
The ceiling tilted.
Your balance vanished under your feet and a small sound escaped you as your knees gave out.
You caught yourself against the side of the bed, trembling.
The world spun violently around you.
“Hannibal…” you spoke, your voice was small and confused.
Your fingers curled into the sheets as you tried to understand why your own body felt so distant.
Why your limbs felt heavy.
Why everything seemed wrapped in fog.
Hannibal remained in the doorway, observing you calmly.
You looked up at him through blurred vision.
“I can't…” your breath shook pathetically, “I can't stand.”
For a moment, you looked almost like you had when you first arrived.
Not an angel, just something frightened and lost.
Hannibal's expression softened a fraction, “Come here.” he repeated.
You stared at him, sniffling and sobbing.
“I'll help you.”
The words settled over you.
Help.
A word you had learned to associate with him.
Slowly, painfully, you moved, not standing, nor walking, but crawling, crawling like a thing.
Your hands pressed against the floor as you dragged yourself forward, wings trailing behind you like a heavy, broken cloak.
Every movement made the room spin harder.
Your breath came unevenly.
You hated how helpless you felt.
You hated that your body no longer obeyed you.
You hated that a part of you still wanted his approval.
“Hannibal…” you sniffled again, reaching toward him, he remained still, patiently waiting.
You looked up as you had come closer, almost reaching him, and then... he stepped back.
Just slightly.
Enough that you had to move farther.
Enough that you had to follow.
Your expression shifted.
Confusion.
Hurt.
Something almost childlike.
“Hannibal?” you whimpered.
He looked down at you, almost patronisingly calm.
His dumb little angel.
“Come on.”
The words were gentle.
But there was something underneath them.
“You can do it.” he cooed, encouraging you.
Your hands trembled against the floor.
The room continued to sway.
Your wings shifted weakly behind you, feathers dragging across the wood.
“I…” your breath hitched, voice breaking, “I don't feel well.”
“I know.”
His gaze never left yours.
“That is why you must learn.”
You stared at him, trying to keep yourself from flopping uselessly to the floor.
The words sank deeper than he likely intended.
Or perhaps exactly as he intended.
This body…
This fragile, aching, hungry body…
was all you had left.
Hannibal extended his hand, offering it to you without quite reaching.
“Come to me.”
You looked at his hand, then at his face.
Slowly, shakily, you moved forward again.
Every inch felt like an eternity.
Your breathing became uneven.
Your eyes burned with tears.
But you continued.
Because he had told you to.
Because you wanted him to look at you the way he did when you succeeded.
Your uneven breathing filled the room, thin little gasps catching in your throat as you finally knelt at Hannibal's feet.
You feared he would move away again.
You feared he would push you away, pull you.
So you leaned into the fabric of his trousers without thinking.
Your forehead rested carefully against him.
Your wings drooped across the floor behind you.
A few were darker than they had been yesterday.
You didn't notice.
Hannibal did.
He looked down at you with quiet fascination.
Not pity.
Never pity.
Only observation.
Your fingers curled weakly around the leg of his trousers.
“It hurts…” you whispered.
“It hurts so much.”
“I know.”
His voice carried no apology.
No reassurance that the pain would end.
He occupied your entire field of vision.
His hand rose to smooth your hair back from your slightly damp forehead.
“I know.”
His thumb brushed beneath your eye, collecting a tear before it could fall.
“You truly believed this would stop.”
Another quiet sniffle escaped you, “I... thought…”
“You thought,” Hannibal interrupted gently, “that you would descend from Heaven without continuing to fall.”
His smile was small.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
“So innocent.”
His fingertips drifted along your jaw.
“So remarkably naïve…”
“You are not becoming human. You never could.”
Your brow knitted together, the confusion hurt almost as much as everything else.
His hand slipped behind your neck, bunching your hair together, making you look up at him properly.
“You are no longer an angel.” he observed, “But neither are you truly human.”
You swallowed painfully.
“...Then … what am I?”
If Heaven no longer claimed you...
And Earth never truly could...
Then what remained?
Your grip tightened weakly on his clothing.
“Please… you have to tell me...
Another tear escaped despite your effort to stop it.
“I don't know what I am anymore.”
You nuzzled against him with blind trust, unaware of how utterly vulnerable the gesture was.
There it was.
The thing he had been cultivating from the moment he found you broken beneath the sky.
He placed one hand against the back of your head.
A soft, exhausted sound escaped you.
“Please…”
His lips curved.
“It is so simple… so simple…”
“You are mine.”
Your breathing steadied.
You looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, searching his face as though it alone held the shape of your existence.
“...Yours?”
“So completely.”
He brushed his thumb across your cheek.
“There is no Heaven waiting for you.”
His hand settled beneath your chin.
“No choir calling your name.”
He tilted your face upward.
“No God who has come looking.”
Another feather drifted silently from one of your wings.
It landed between the two of you.
It was no longer pure white.
“So…”
His eyes held yours with great certainty.
“You belong where you are wanted.”
His thumb stroked your lower lip with tender gentleness.
“You belong with me.”
You didn't know why those words filled the hollow inside you.
You only knew...
...that they did.
Your eyes fluttered shut.
Almost unconsciously, you leaned forward again, seeking his warmth as though it were the only thing in your.
Behind your back, unnoticed by either of you,
another white feather loosened itself.
As it touched the floor...
its pristine edge slowly darkened,
until a ribbon of black spread through it,
like ink blooming through holy silk.
Dim light seeped through the tall windows in Hannibal's office, leaving the room suspended between night and day.
It felt appropriate somehow. Nothing about the last few days belonged entirely to either.
Will's attention was drawn completely to the object resting on the coffee table between their chairs.
A halo.
It lay upon the polished wood with unsettling stillness. Thin fractures crawled through the once flawless ring.
The gold had dulled into something pale and tired, and only every now and then it weakly pulses.
Will stared at it for a long time.
“...That's theirs.” he said, it wasn't really a question.
Hannibal settled in his chair opposite him with effortless composure, crossing one leg over the other.
“It is.”
Again, silence stretched between them.
Will couldn't stop looking at it.
Reluctantly, he finally looked up to Hannibal, “...Why keep it?”
The question lingered in the room.
Hannibal had placed it here, polished the table beneath it, positioned it precisely in the centre of the room as though it were another sculpture in his collection.
Hannibal regarded the fractured halo with unmistakable appreciation.
“Because it is evidence.” he hummed.
“Of what?”
“Transformation.”
Another pulse flickered through the cracked gold.
Weak.
Dying.
Beautiful.
“I've spent the last time observing them,” Hannibal continued. “At first I entertained the possibility that humanity was simply another state of existence. A temporary adaptation.”
He folded his hands loosely together.
“I no longer believe that.”
Will listened without interrupting.
“They will never become human. They inhabit a human body. Experience human sensation. They bleed. They hunger. They fatigue. They ache.”
His expression remained composed.
“But humanity is not just flesh.”
Will's eyes drifted back to the halo, “...Then what are they?”
Hannibal smiled almost imperceptibly, “They are something that should not exist.”
The words should have sounded clinical.
Instead they carried unmistakable admiration.
“They occupy a space that has not existed before.”
His fingers lightly brushed the armrest.
“Imagine awakening inside a body that fits perfectly... yet never once feels like your own.”
Will frowned, “They're trapped.”
“Precisely.”
“They are condemned to experience humanity without ever becoming human.”
Hannibal leaned back, “They remember eternity. They remember existing without hunger, without exhaustion, without loneliness.”
His gaze grew distant, thoughtful.
“Now every heartbeat is foreign. Every breath. Every emotion. They wear mortality the way another person might wear borrowed skin.”
The sentence settled somewhere deep inside Will.
Borrowed skin.
He thought about you wrapping your wings around yourself until only your eyes were visible.
About the way you asked what beauty was.
What kissing meant.
He remembered the way you had stared into the falling snow as though the world itself confused you.
“...They're alone.” Will breathed.
Hannibal's eyes found his, “Completely.”
“I keep thinking…” Will admitted quietly, “...that if someone explained things differently… maybe they'd hurt less.”
Hannibal watched him with quiet fascination, “You wish to understand them.”
This time Will didn't answer.
Because that, at least, was true.
Hannibal's smile returned, deeply pleased.
“I suspected as much.” he said, but there was no mockery in it.
Only appreciation.
As though Will had arrived precisely where Hannibal expected he eventually would.
“You see them,” Hannibal said softly, “Not as a miracle, but as a person attempting to survive.”
Will rubbed tiredly at his forehead, “I don't know what they are.”
“No.” Hannibal mused, “You don't.”
Hannibal's voice dropped lower, “But neither do they.”
The room fell silent again.
Will found himself leaning forward before he'd consciously decided to.
His hand hovered over the halo.
He hesitated.
Then, carefully, his fingertips touched the fractured gold.
Across from him, Hannibal did not move.
He simply watched.
Watched Will.
Watched the halo.
And somewhere behind Hannibal's composed expression lived a satisfaction so profound it bordered on affection.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
hannibal nbc taglist . . .‧˚꒰🔦꒱༘‧ @ilovehorror-18 @kashimeowr @afw5 @andyinthemiddleofsixx @robertthehoover @sebbymybaby21 @luanniidae
a/n: we have all been waiting for it... and here we are now... the new fallen chapter :)
