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It began when Will was born. Of course, he didn't know it then, but as his brain developed, permitting thoughts beyond the autonomic processes that govern the body, he began to realize that his brain had an occupant other than himself.
At first, he expressed this phenomenon as the existence of an imaginary friend. When he was four, and called out in his stuttering voice, "Hannibal, play with me!" his father only felt concern at the name of his son's friend, not the non-existence of a corporal body for this friend. Imaginary friends are, after all, an often normal aspect of the development of a child's mental capacities. Or so Will's teacher had told him, with laughter. But the name...he blamed it on an over-active imagination, or one of the books Will had asked him to read to him.
And when Will grew older, and still he called out to Hannibal, his father was concerned that it appeared only his son still spoke to unseen friends, and all of the other children had moved on to books and television shows and rambunctious games of tag and kickball. He took his son fishing, and together they watched as their lures attracted the fish, and Will chased after the unseen lure of the person that seemed to live only inside his head. He pushed concerns for his son out of his mind, hoping that this was simply a very long phase, and that it would, eventually pass, or that Will would learn that it was best not to mention Hannibal in every conversation.
When Will was in high school, he met a girl, Sydney with the most beautiful blonde hair, who seemed to like him, despite the twitchiness and varying degrees of weirdness that had always been a part of his being, and she held his hand and kissed his lips and told him that she would show him everything, and in his mind, Hannibal was quiet. It was the first moment of quiet that Will had ever experienced, and week after week, he slept at Sydney's house, missing Hannibal and, at the same time, mourning his temporary absence. Sydney, it seemed, did not have anyone living inside of her head besides, of course, herself. Sydney was beautiful, and the silence formed in the space between their bodies was enchanting.
He went to college and was deemed an outcast, but it was a category to which he had always belonged, and never quite minded as much as his father may have wanted him to. He tapped his pen through classes, and slept restlessly on a lumpy mattress, and somehow, he graduated and was afforded the chance to become a police officer. He had been drawn to the law since he was young; he liked knowing that there were people out there in the world who were far weirder than he would ever be, despite anything the voice in his head who had a name said to him.
Hannibal had once been a guiding light, a voice leading him to something greater than simple humanity. But as the years passed, and Will became something of a pariah on the police force, something seemed to change, and the light grew to be a signal of pain, rather than a beacon of friendship. Like a haunted house, the darkness possessed him.
And then he was shot, and there was a voice screaming in his head, pushing through the very darkness it had created, as he was transported by ambulance to the hospital, and the voice did not stop screaming despite the morphine coursing through his veins. He convalesced in a room with pale green walls, and although his body healed, he felt that something was broken in his mind. A doctor advised an MRI for the headaches, but nothing was found. Something was going on, but Will knew that it was far from medical.
A career change was necessary, imperative, and somehow, the FBI found him a fitting candidate for a temporary teaching post, which seemed to involve more consulting on cases than actually standing in front of a classroom of bright-eyed young adults. And in exchange for his services, he earned a salary, a small home in the middle of nowhere, seven dogs, and insomnia. Fair enough.
And Hannibal was quiet. Occasionally, he spoke, and the darkness clouded Will's vision no matter how much he rubbed at his eyes, and he spoke of impossible places and strange lands, and he used words Will could not understand, and it felt a bit like he supposed the princesses in all the old tales felt, with the faeries whispering secrets and dreams into their ears that one day may yet come true.
One day, a girl nearly died beneath his hands, and although he had not caused her blood to spill, he felt his mind merge with the mind of the man who had, and Hannibal was silent. His head had no room for multiple occupants, and it was bursting at the seams with Garrett Jacob Hobbs speaking of memory and Hannibal, when he did speak, speaking of future.
He does not remember a time before Hannibal, and when Garrett Jacob Hobbs whispers to him, inspiring murder into his heart and treason into his mind, he begins to wonder what it would be like to live without his phantom, without this voice, this man, inhabiting the same space as his soul. What would he be without him? What would he do without him?
Will raises the loaded gun to his head, and there are tears in his eyes, and his hands are shaking, and yet they are steady, and his fingers are on the trigger - and then he is lowering the gun, and he feels a phantom touch along his hand, fingers running across his cheek, his chin, his mouth, and the voice is in his head - and it is just Hannibal now, just the strangely, sweetly accented voice of his youth. He knows that this is not natural, that this could be the very definition of unnatural, and yet -
He would be nothing without him.