Hell wasn't hot — that much Hannibal Lecter knew. Hell wasn't a fiery, underground wasteland populated by souls of the damned; no, Hell was a perpetual, visceral cold that seeped into your bones. It was a filthy seven-foot trench scraped out of the earth and it's only inhabitants were corpses and the ghosts of ordinary men still attached to their physical forms. Hell was here, above ground, screaming in their ears and contaminating every sight. It was detectable in the stench of decaying bodies, poison gas, and disinfectants. Hell was the metallic taste of blood in one's mouth. It was everywhere you turned but, ironically, unfortunately, Hell's walls were keeping him alive.
Hannibal didn't pity the mangled corpses surrounding him; he envied them. He often wondered why he didn't just sit above the trenches and wait to be shot. It would be so easy — too easy — to end all his suffering, disappearing without a trace beneath the rapidly growing piles of dead bodies. He repeatedly daydreamed about it. It was a nice thought — silently vanishing from the world as if his pathetic existence had never been. Finally he'd be allowed to just rest; finding peace among his fallen troops. His cold, stiff, dead body sprawled on the ground, eyes missing — eaten by rats — and likely decomposing with foul rot beneath all the other nameless corpses, but without a single concern; he yearned for it. He didn't care if he would be missed or not. However, self-preservation had always been a strong instinct in him, stronger than most; he cursed it now.
"Fire at will!" was shouted in the distance. Three ear-splitting bangs went off — Hannibal waited a moment — another three faint explosions could be heard not far away, each accompanied by a flash of light. He felt the ground tremble at the abuse. He was used to it.
Hannibal no longer knew if God was real. Maybe the Devil was real. Maybe the Devil was God. It wouldn't surprise him. Whatever the truth was, Hannibal knew the Devil was not a single entity. He lurked everywhere. He was living in the shadows, hiding in the lifeless, open eyes of the soldiers and slithering just beneath the muck at his feet. The Devil was always scouring the trenches for his next victim — Hannibal could feel him at his back, between his toes, breathing across his face. He crawled through the veins of every soldier and whispered in their ears, in their minds, in their dreams, until one day they snapped and lifted a revolver to their temples or that of their friends. The Devil ravaged everything; he had even soiled every drop of rain that reached the ground.
Rain was supposed to be cleansing. Hannibal tried to pretend to like it, it was really the only chance he got to bathe. In reality, the rain only made everything more miserable. The water soaked his uniform and half froze him to death every night. The trenches got dirtier; the mud seeped into his clothes, his boots, his hair. Sludge even got in his eyes. It was almost impossible to maneuver the dead, rotting carcasses when the mud invariably seeked to drag him under. Occasionally, a misshapen trench wall would collapse from a deformity caused by the excess water; it buried men alive but it also covered the older corpses. Hannibal tried to be grateful the skies were clear tonight. He found it hard to be grateful for anything anymore.
He was starving, he was exhausted, itchy, and he was always so very, very cold. Rations were shit, but they were food and it kept him alive. They were starting to run out though, and more wouldn't be delivered for another two weeks. He vaguely wondered how many people would starve before then.
He fired his rifle one last time before he was relieved of duty; he decided to find his sleeping partner. He carefully, wearily climbed over the dead bodies he'd been standing near to fire over the trench walls. As his foot touched the ground he noticed he couldn't feel his toes. They had been hurting before and he didn't remember when they had stopped. Hannibal's toes were probably black by now; he vaguely wondered if he'd have to cut them off. He knew Sherlock was somewhere to the left, and if he kept wandering in that direction he'd find him eventually.
He trudged his way through the mixture of dirt, blood, and bodily wastes until he reached a point where a bombshell had struck. He meticulously surveyed the damage. Most of the bodies were surprisingly intact. A few appendages and chunks of flesh scattered the area; a foot here, an arm there, but for the most part his dead comrades just stared blankly at him as he passed through. Maggots and rats were already starting to appear.
Hannibal startled at a particularly large brown one that had been working through a soldier's abdomen. The rat hissed viciously as Hannibal get away from it. Common courtesy demanded that they be exterminated whenever possible in the trenches. Sometimes bored troops, including Hannibal, would gather small parties and go hunting for the monsters as a way to entertain themselves and let out their frustration. Many times Hannibal had participated in shooting, stabbing, beating, and overall disfiguring the rats before they were thrown carelessly out of the trenches. Occasionally it was turned into a contest. However, it didn't seem to make any difference; there were always more feasting on the eyes of cadavers and running across soldiers' faces while they slept. The rats were the worst; he didn't think twice as he aimed for the head.
Hannibal eventually stopped and sat for a moment across from one of the corpses he recognized. He was just another inconspicuous German boy, just another faceless victim. He was younger than Hannibal. He never even knew his name. Oh well.
He gazed at the blood pouring from his head, the source of which was part of a protruding skull bone. Ed noticed the gray matter starting to leak out. He stared into the disfigured eye barely hanging in it's socket and a similarly maimed ear. The kid's entire front was soaked in his own blood; large amounts congealed on the ground underneath him. He looked downward and noticed the boy's right arm was absent. He chuckled quietly to himself.
"You and me both, kid," he commented with a wry sense of humor. No one was around to hear him.
He kept watching the defunct corpse, studying the boy's final living emotion; the one that would be forever etched onto his features: horror. Hannibal had to agree. He disinterestedly got back up and continued to look for Sherlock . Emotionlessly, he scanned the dead bodies as he went, checking to see if his partner had been one of the casualties. Sooner or later he made his way back to a part of the trench where the bodies were still breathing. That was good.
He spotted Sherlock quickly, already settling in for the night against one of the hard dirt walls. It was important to sleep with your back to No Man's Land — it was harder for snipers to blow your brains out that way. Sometimes Hannibal ignored the rule. He reminisced about the time he first met Sherlock. He had been trying to sneak a glance over the parapet of the trench and Hannibal had tackled him onto the duckboard. It was painfully obvious this Sherlock had never been in the military.
He quietly shuffled over to Sherlock who, despite his eyes being closed, opened up the blanket, beckoning him to get underneath like every other night. Hannibal didn't hesitate in doing so.
Sherlock wrapped an arm around his waist, bringing the blanket with him. Hannibal shivered; it was always cold at first, but once the body heat spread through their clothes it wasn't so bad. Sherlock nuzzled the crook of his neck.
"Hey," he whispered tiredly.
"Hey," Hannibal grunted in response.
"I've got something for you," Hannibal stated. He held out a ration bar.
"How did you get that?" Sherlock asked suspiciously, slightly incredulous.
"Someone owed me a favor. Take it." He lied, he had taken the bar from a dead man, but Sherlock didn’t need to know that.
Sherlock did. It might've had all the taste and texture of sandpaper but he know Sherlock was hungry; a couple of ribs were starting show on his body.
Hannibal kissed Sherlock, first his neck, then his lips. It didn't matter if people saw, it didn't matter if people watched; all they had for company were the empty shells of former human beings — some had heartbeats, others didn't. It didn't matter.
He knew he would do anything to keep Sherlock safe, he couldn’t bear to lose him.
It wasn't long until Sherlock fell asleep still hugging Hannibal. The younger man leaned his head against Hannibal’s. As he watched Sherlock sleep, he thought of his wife and son, he hardly remembered them these days, the memories of his life before the war seemed to belong to someone else, the only thing he knew now was the war and Sherlock.
Sherlock tried to make him promises for long after the war ended and, despite the sincerity in his eyes, Hannibal knew they wouldn’t get out of this, and if they did, Sherlock would return to his girlfriend to whom he had been engaged before the war, and Hannibal would go back to his waiting family, trying to forget Sherlock ever existed.
He looked up at the clear sky, gazing at the stars that seemed to mock him. Up there, where no one could reach, it looked like a perfect paradise. He tried to imagine what it was like up there, but his fantasies were constantly being marred by the light of far-off explosions. Here at this moment, he was trapped in a foreign Hell-on-Earth, trying desperately to carve out some sort of Heaven inside Sherlock's warm arms.
Hell wasn't hot — that much Hannibal Lecter knew. Hell was a deep, unshakable frost that lodged itself in one's soul. It came from the knowledge that hope was futile and that death was inexorably close. Hell's only populace were cowardly men who made mistakes and couldn't forgive themselves. It was detectable anywhere, in every imaginable crevice, but it could be most strongly felt in the heavily abused bodies, minds, and spirits of run-down, worn-out soldiers.
Hannibal Lecter had been living in Hell his entire life, and he was tired.