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Breathing after drowning has been described to feel painful, yet hopeful, like dragging yourself down a railroad track, body battered and seeing the light at the other end of the tunnel. For Will that light was just another train. And breathing felt more like oxygen was made of sharp crystals, and his insides had been skinned and scratched raw already by the salt and the force of his coughs.
For a blaring moment his vision is near white as he coughs and chokes with the mind-numbing sensation of being so, so very unmistakingly, painfully, regretfully, alive. When the initial stinging agony fades to a duller aching Will is able to process the other pain.
He had been stabbed. Once in the face, and once in the chest. He thought, and he could have sworn, that it would be enough to kill him. The weight of everything he is on his shoulders, like a blanket filled with weights, warm, then boiling hot.
Will was sure, so very sure he’d die no matter what. That this was his Becoming. Death. How beautiful and poetic that the force he fought in every facet of his life would turn to be the final stage of his metamorphosis. It seems now he’s just broken out of the chrysalis and was born into a world with a floor made of shards of glass, wind made of fiberglass, and sun that’ll boil your skin despite the chill you feel being soaked in the sea and your once warm blood.
Bleeding was such an oddly warm feeling. Bleeding against Hannibal a feeling that felt damn near infernal. So into the ocean, to quench the flame, to complete the transformation, to put to rest a query solved. Hannibal had to come with Will, because Will didn’t want to be alone. He wanted Hannibal to see what he’d become.
Even if Hannibal didn’t die, and instead had to leave Will’s mangled, sea bloated body bleeding endlessly into the blue, he would have been fine with that. With anything other than blinking the bleary mind numbing pain away, and realizing he’s alive.
When he can feel something other than the pain of his whole body he can feel Hannibal’s hand firm on the back of his neck, his thumb just behind Will’s ear. Will processes Hannibal’s face.
“There you are Will, stay with me.” Will just groaned in response, trying to orient himself. He comes to a bit more. He’s sitting, with his back against something hard, his legs settling into something soft. He can smell the ocean, and blood, but he’s not sure if they’re by the ocean or not, his ears are ringing and every noise sounds dull.
Hearing Hannibal is a mix of lip reading and guessing based on sounds. “What… what are you doing ?” Will asks, his voice rough and breathless, before breaking into a small coughing fit that leaves him tasting blood.
Hannibal looks just as disheveled, but there’s something in his eyes Will has scarcely seen there. What looks to be concern, a possessive concern and an infuriated one, but concern no less. “I’m trying to save your life Will, the one you tried so carelessly to throw away once it had just started.”
Will wants to laugh, and scoff, and cry, so he just sort of breathes out forcefully, a mix of all three. He can’t tell if the tears in his eyes are from all the pain of everything physically or emotionally. Or if he wants to cry because he’s still alive.
“You should let me die.” He croaks out, but he’s not quite sure how much he means it. Hannibal’s grip tightens forcefully in Will’s hair, fingers curling and short nails scratching against the back of his neck. Will winces slightly before meeting Hannibal’s gaze.
“You’re selfish to even insinuate I do such a thing for you,” Will swallows thickly, throat tasting still of bitter salt and coppery blood. “You will learn to live. You don’t get to give up, not after all I’ve done to make you what you are, Will.”
Hannibal leans just the tiniest bit closer. “Do you know what you are now Will?” Will shakes his head, he’s never known who or what he is. He loves like a dog and like a sacrificial lamb, he bites and bleeds for everyone he loves. He embraces the knife at his neck as much as he tears at the hand holding it.
“You are whole. You are beautiful, and alive. You will continue to live.” Whole, beautiful, and alive. Will feels like he’s in a billion pieces in his own body right now, everything hurts, he’s covered in blood and he knows for a fact he can’t look half as beautiful as the way Hannibal seems to see him at this moment.
Will is basked and soaked in hopes of death and the death of all his hope to ever be anything whole again. To ever feel alive. He died a long time ago, he’s come to realize. As a husk, the cremated dust of who he once was, blowing around in a hollow cold body, warmed only when it’s engulfed and swallowed fully in flames.
Hannibal is looking at Will with such conviction and fervor, however, that Will has no choice but to nod jerkily, feeling the tug in the curls at his nape. His head is pounding, and his whole body is wracked with tremors. Yet he nods.
When Hannibal half forces, half helps him to his feet, they’re both groaning and panting, on the verge of collapse carried only by pure spite and refusal to die. Will has felt confused about Hannibal for a long time. He said he just wanted him dead, but that didn’t feel right.
He decided that if Hannibal were to die, he wanted to be the one to kill him. Now that doesn’t feel quite right either. Will doesn’t want Hannibal to die, but if he does it is to be by Will’s hands or no hands at all. Not even God’s.
Now Will is confused on if he wants to die, or if he wants Hannibal to kill him, or if he wants to live and only die at Hannibal's hands. Will has always been confused about himself. But Hannibal seemed to know. Will was happy to hand the decision over, and let somebody else worry about it.
Everything Will has had in his life since he met Hannibal has been conditional freedom permitted by him. Abigail, his job, Alana, Jack, his own life, his dignity, Molly, Walter, his dogs, his hobbies, anything and everything were all just something allowed by Hannibal just to be taken away to keep him in line.
Every single time he thought that he had found a way out of the cycle, the maze, it turned into a new one, a labyrinth. The further he walks, the more he thinks he knows, the worse he gets lost and the worse he gets hurt.
As Will stumbles, arm in arm with Hannibal, where he guides Will, he finds himself content to sit on the floor and just listen to the whisper and echoes that carry telling him to let the cycle spiral and himself with it.
Why should he fight himself to death to be a good person when all that got him was suffering? When every single time Hannibal won, survived, got exactly what he wanted in the end? Is it patience? Is it sheer luck?
Whatever it is, Will submits to it. He heels for it like a freshly tamed dog. They make their way back to the cliffside house. It takes a long while. They’re both slow and need breaks to lean or sit when possible.
When they reach the house the sun is just starting to peek over the horizon. Will is surprised how he hasn’t bled out, how Hannibal hasn’t died from the gunshot. He was sure though that it was some miracle, some instance where every stab and shot missed the vital things it’d need to hit to be immediately fatal. Likely that and some combination of adrenaline.
Hannibal makes a quick terse call and within minutes there’s a man stepping in through the door. Will sits sopping on the couch, soaking it with the water his clothes retained as he watches the stranger warily.
After a quiet and rushed conversation the two shake hands and the man walks out the door. Hannibal sits heavily next to Will, sighing and groaning as he does so. “That is a medical friend of mine… He’s going to help treat our injuries discreetly.”
Will just nods, too exhausted to respond, too on edge to sleep. Once he’s slept, he’s sure a whole world of agonizingly hopeless thoughts, and horrible knots of dread will well in his stomach painfully waiting for him just on the other side of rest. For now he feels mostly bodily pain and numbness.
“That was a careless thing to do Will. You could have killed both of us.” Hannibal knows that Will knows this, but he can’t help but chastise Will’s stupidity. “Or worse, paralyzed us. They’re not as high as they seem, they are called bluffs for a reason.”
Will doesn’t want to respond, but he also doesn’t want Hannibal to keep talking. “I get it. You're pissed I tried to kill us.”
Hannibal frowns deeply. “I’m outraged at your wasteful resistance, Will. Do you truly not see it?”
Will, exasperated, opens his eyes and lolls his head heavily to face Hannibal, who’s much closer than he anticipated. “See what?”
Will watches Hannibal’s face do that thing he so often had seen it do, where it’s like all the life and humanity drains out of him and for a horrible moment Will is staring into an abyss that stares back. Void of life and sound and all light, but he feels like there's a gaze piercing straight through him.
Then it’s gone. “The life you said was beautiful.”
Will nods. “The freedom. That’s beautiful,” Then he rushes to correct, “ was beautiful.” before he sets his head back, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly. “But you can never be free from your own mind, Hannibal. I can’t escape the way I think.”
“You don’t need to escape it. You need to change it Will, embrace the new parts of you instead of shunning them into the dark. Bear them into the light, don’t shy away from them, they’re a part of you that deserve equal attentions–” A knock at the door breaks Hannibal off in the middle of his impassioned monologue, much to Will’s pleasure as his head is still pounding.
“Remember how alive you felt when you acted on instinct, and not societally learned moral guidelines. When you allowed yourself to heel to your true desires.” Hannibal says, before standing to go let the man in. He returns with one other man and several kits of supplies.
Will resists the care only moderately so, snapping at the man for touching or grabbing him, but allowing him to patch the wounds with little more than a controlled hiss. He watched with a grimace as Hannibal sat, face scrunching in pain but the picture of a calm cooperative patient.
And after nearly an hour of Will’s snapping the two men eventually left and Hannibal came to settle beside Will again, frowning.
“You were quite discourteous to the man tending to you.” Hannibal searches Will’s face. “He was helping you, Will.”
Will is about ready to snap, or to cry. He just nods. “Yeah I know.”
“You’re acting abnormally, Will.”
“What did you expect, Hannibal? These circumstances aren’t normal. I survived a suicide attempt,” Hannibal is a touch shocked at just how harshly and how firmly Will speaks those words. Will is too. “and you survived it too, I’m not exactly overjoyed right now.” Killing himself was something that had crossed his mind before. The idea that he could get away from everything so easily, to find his way into some nothingness that wasn’t peaceful, but at least it wasn’t painful it was just nothing.
He had never acknowledged that before. Hannibal just watches a mixture of interest and curiosity on his face. “Will. You have changed, that is reason to have joy. Were you happy with the way you were?”
Will shakes his head, eyes screwing shut. He brings his hands up to rub down his face roughly trying to avoid doing or saying anything he’d regret. “No, or... I don’t know. But… I’m not exactly the picture of happiness right now either.”
“That will change when you stop resisting it.”
Will takes a deep breath, burying his face into his hands. “I don’t have the energy to resist it. I just don’t think I’ll ever be happy. I don’t think that’s something made for someone like me.”
“You’re human like the rest of us. You will feel happiness and sorrow, and rage too. Maybe not all in equal measure, but you have felt it. And you will feel it again.”
Will can’t even say anything to that. How do you explain that your body may be human but that your consciousness was never allowed to develop into a person? His mom wasn’t around, his dad had a full time job, and they moved around a lot. Will never got to have those formative experiences, nobody showed up for parent day at school, he didn’t go to prom, or any house parties. He didn’t have shithead friends, or a girlfriend, he wasn’t in clubs or sports. He never did anything that wasn’t required.
For Will’s whole life the way he thinks and feels and has lived forced him into his own bubble, separate from the whole world, he hasn’t felt like a human in a long time. He’s felt like a tool and sometimes a toy.
“I don’t know.” He settles for those three words. Hannibal purses his lips slightly and furrows his brow.
“Well I do Will. Trust me to know the things you don’t, trust me to lead you down the right path.”
“The way a lamb trusts a butcher?”
“The way a dog trusts its owner.”
Will gets nauseous so he doesn’t respond, he just swallows thickly and sets his head back again, closing his eyes. After a moment he almost whispers; “I’m not your pet, Hannibal.”
“No… I don’t intend it to be that way either. You don’t feel human? Then, love and trust like a dog, a part of the family, man’s best friend. Just not quite human.”
Will feels another wave of nausea, more intense this time. He doesn’t respond at all, he just sits there feeling the pressure in the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry. He doesn’t even really have the energy.
Hannibal can see that Will won’t be responding, so he sighs and stands. “There’s a guest room with a bed, if you’d prefer to sleep there. We’ve had a long night, and we’ll be leaving soon.”
Will wants to know where, but he stays silent and still until he hears Hannibal’s relenting footsteps padding away. He peeks his eyes open, and then sits up with a deep breath. It takes a lot of grimacing and more energy than it should for Will to make it to the room.
He strips the still wet clothes off and scrounges around until he finds some clothes. They’re some richly colored and expensive feeling fabrics that Will doesn’t care for. He trudges over to the bed and half falls half climbs his way to the middle.
The bed is too plush as well, the duvet too fluffy, the pillows too plentiful and soft. Will is uncomfortable in the lavish accommodations Hannibal provided. He preferred to live a bit rustically, a bit spartanly. He doesn’t need to be comforted or coddled, he needs to sleep.
But his limbs and eyelids are too heavy so with a few jerky movements he’s tucked himself under the too plush fabric and he goes still, trying to give in to the tidal pull of sleep.