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“Excuse me, Mr. Graham? Do you have a minute?”
Will holds back the sigh that would have surely sagged his shoulders and given away his annoyance. “What for?”
The student isn’t someone he recognizes. He doesn’t make a point of memorizing faces, and very few of his students stop to speak with him after class. He’s a bit taller than Will, with sandy hair and strikingly pale skin. Sagging, black-bruised skin crinkles around icy blue eyes. “I just had a question. About the blood trails.”
Will grits his teeth, watching as the last of his students filter out the door, letting it swing shut in their wake, and leaving him alone with his questioner. “Ask away.”
“Okay, well first, my name’s Canyon,” the student says. Will groans internally. Exchanging first names is never the start of a brief conversation. “It’s a pleasure to be in your class.” He smiles broadly but doesn’t wait for Will to respond. “Anyways, about the blood trails. You said the pattern was suspicious.”
“Yes,” Will says, ducking his head to avoid Canyon’s piercing stare. He can still feel the cold eyes on him, strangely hot against his skin.
“It doesn’t make sense that a killer would clean everything else up, but leave the blood trails everywhere,” Canyon says. He’s practically quoting Will’s lecture word for word. “So it must have significance to him. Right? That’s what you think?”
Will doesn’t suppress his sigh this time. “Please get to the point.”
“What do you think the significance is?”
Exasperation rises hot in his chest, and Will turns around, pretending to fiddle with some papers, so he can shield himself from the painfully attentive stare. The query reminds him so starkly of Jack and his endless stream of brutal murders, a reality that he tries to keep out of his classroom, and it only makes him resent this line of questioning more.
Still, Will is a teacher, and explaining this to a student is different than standing amid a murder scene and exploring the killer’s head. “It’s just my theory, but it seems like... like a puzzle. If you got all the trails together, it would form some sort of message.”
“Like an art piece,” Canyon breathes behind him. He hears his footsteps shifting closer. “Sort of beautiful, if you think about it.”
“In a way,” is what Will thinks, and he opens his mouth to say it, but something stops him. The shadows stretched across the back wall shift; Canyon raising his arm suddenly. Will turns just enough to see the glint of steel in his hand.
He lunges aside, narrowly dodging the blow. The knife hits the desktop, splintering the wood. Canyon curses through gritted teeth and lunges again, blade arching in a silver streak barely visible to Will. This time, though he staggers back, the blade catches his skin, slicing a neat, red line through his shirt and into his chest and part of his left arm. The pain is instant and searing, but it isn’t bleeding heavily. Will raises his arms protectively over his face and upper chest, opening his mouth to call for help.
He never gets the chance. Canyon slams into him with the force of a speeding car, knocking him to the ground, his full weight pressed atop his chest. The air rushes from Will’s lungs in one go, leaving him heaving and gasping like a beached fish. Canyon raises the knife above his head. The cold steel catches his reflection for a brief moment, snarling and cold, Will pinned beneath him.
He can’t do anything to defend himself as Canyon brings the knife down. The blade sinks deep into his side, slotting easily between his ribs, tearing through the sinewy flesh like a hot knife through butter. Will cries out, pain strangling him, so all that emerges is a gasp that deflates in mid-air, almost certainly unheard. His eyes flit frantically to the closed door, beyond which people are bustling in the hallways, too loud and too caught in their own worlds to hear him being murdered.
I wonder who’s going to find the motive for my death, Will thinks, slightly hysterically. He looks back to Canyon, terrified but unable to look away. He has to see it coming. He has to watch.
“You’re going to be a work of art,” Canyon says. “Your blood is going to be beautiful.”
“Wait, please,” Will gets out, before the knife comes down a second time. His stomach is on fire, and he can feel the hot, sticky blood thrumming against his skin, but he focuses resolutely on Canyon’s face, forcing his foggy brain to keep working, just a little longer. “At least... tell me why.”
Canyon hesitates, knife held aloft by his shoulder. “You really want to know?”
“Of course... of course I do.”
“It’s an art piece.” Canyon smiled thinly, eyes sparkling, proud. “Together they make the big snake. It’s the path we all have to take.”
It’s complete nonsense, but Will nods like he understands. “Wh-where does it lead?” Talking is getting harder. Canyon’s knee is still pressing into his chest, choking off his airway and squeezing blood from his side faster.
“You’re about to find out,” Canyon says.
Will’s eyes widen. Canyon grips the knife tighter. A shadow appears behind them, the Wendigo, Will thinks in a panic. Then there’s a heavy thud, and Canyon is slumping to the side. The knife clatters harmlessly to the ground. Will gasps, hands scrabbling for the gushing wound on his side.
A face comes into focus, familiar and friendly, creased in worry. “Let me,” Hannibal says, and his practiced hands take Will’s place, cupped over the wound in a strangely tender fashion.
“Hann...” Will’s voice trails off, pain surging through him as the doctor applies firm pressure. He groans, shutting his eyes, but even as Hannibal scolds him, asking him to keep them open and stay awake, he finds he can’t.
“There’s been a stabbing,” someone calls out. It sounds like Hannibal, but Will’s never heard Hannibal yell, or sound so worried. “Call the paramedics, quickly.”
Right before darkness swallows him, Will registers warm breath on the side of his face, and a low, heavily accented voice rumbling in his ear. “You will live,” it says, and Will clings to it as he falls.
---
When he finally comes to, it isn’t pain that brings him to the surface, but the strange lack of it. Will blinks awake to a white ceiling, a thin blanket draped over his middle, head cushioned on something fluffy and cool. There’s a dark pant leg in the corner of his vision. Will turns slowly to see Hannibal slumped in a plastic chair beside him.
He looks less put together than Will has ever seen him, which is to say he has one hair out of place, and his jacket is rumpled. His eyes are closed but he isn’t asleep, and the second Will’s gaze locks onto him, he’s shifting forwards in his chair, a tight-lipped smile ghosting his face.
“Hello, Will,” he says. He sets aside the book propped open on his lap and rests a hand over Will’s. “How are you feeling?”
Will hesitates a moment, anticipating a wave of pain at the question, but none comes. “Fine,” he says, a little shocked, “um, what...?”
“What do you remember?” Hannibal asks, reading his unspoken thoughts off Will’s face.
“He stopped me after class, asked about the blood trails.” Hannibal doesn’t have context, but he nods anyways like he understands. “Then he attacked me. He stabbed me once, I think? Then--”
Then you saved me.
“It is lucky I was there,” Hannibal muses. The way he’s smiling makes Will think there’s something more he’s not letting on, but that could just be the morphine talking. “Luckier still that no vital organs were hit. You will make a full recovery.”
Will nods, a little dazed. Shock must have settled in, because it hasn’t hit him yet how bizarre this entire situation is, or how frighteningly close to death he’d been. He keeps mulling through the day's events, his brain stalling when he comes back to his final memory, of Hannibal appearing above him right before he met his end.
“Why were you there?” Will asks. He’s sure it sounds rude, but he’s too tired to rephrase. Hannibal doesn’t look offended; in fact, he smiles.
“I had been planning on asking you to lunch. You and I must spend more time together, Will.” His gaze flits over Will’s bandaged torso, lips quirking. “If not only so I can keep you safe from people like him.”
He’s joking, but there’s a glint in his eyes that says he really means it. Will is once again too tired to care, so though confusion is swirling in his mind, he just settles against his pillows and says, “thank you, I guess.”
Hannibal pats his hand. “You are quite welcome.”
He’d expected Hannibal to leave, but to his surprise (and private delight) he stays right where he is for the next several hours. He fills Will in on his attacker’s motive (the killer, obviously, extremely narcissistic and annoyed at being misrepresented, as he felt, by Will), reassures him that his dogs are being taken care of and his classes will be covered, promises that Jack will leave him alone for the next week at least. Will tries to protest that last one, but Hannibal gives him a look that pins him firmly to his bed.
When the drag starts pulling him under, Hannibal stays by his side. The last thing he sees is Hannibal’s dark shape leaning over him, eyes soft and smile still fixed gently on Will. Later will come the fallout, the pain and recovery, but somehow Will knows Hannibal will be there too, and if that’s the case, it won’t be so bad.