Chapter Text
The room was a bright white with large fluorescent lights shining down into my eyes. I couldn't see much but I could feel everything. My mouth tasted like rusty metal. My cheek burned with a sharp pain and my shoulder ached with fury. I couldn't feel my right hand but what I could feel was that I was wet. My assumption at the time was that I had just woken up and was sweating.
Shortly after realizing the pain I was in, I noticed I was moving. I was still laying down but I was moving. I tried to focus my eyes, squinted, it didn't help. The only thing I could infer was that I had something wrapped around my neck and hands all over my body. Disoriented, and still trying to figure out my situation I noticed some voices surrounding me. It took me what felt like awhile to realize that they weren't coming from my head.
“Youre going to be okay will, just hang on” said a feminine voice
I tried to sit up to better understand what was going on and was pushed back down.
“What… what's going on,” I said very softly. My throat hurt like hell I just noticed. “Shh don’t try to speak, you, will graham are in the hospital you're going into surgery at the moment, we think you took a fall. We found you on a beach” said a gravely, older man's voice. A confused noise slipped out of my mouth, before I could get an answer back I heard doors slam open “push sixty-six milligrams anesthesia" said a distant voice and seconds later everything went black.
I woke to a beeping noise that slowly faded in getting louder. I was sweating. Everything was still fuzzy. I was sitting up against a hard bed. My eyes adjusted and I took in the room I was in. Though my vision wasn't clear, what I could make out was that the walls were mainly white with some beige stripes on the wall. Next to me was a monitor for my heart beat that was connected to sticky pads on my chest and on the other side was a table that held a vase with a few flowers and an iv with multiple bags on it connected directly to my wrist. Above me was a harsh white light that shined down on me.
I was so confused, I still had no idea how or why I was in the hospital nonetheless the extent of my injuries. Now as I am more aware I learned the stiffness that covered my neck was in fact a neck brace. After realising it was a brace then did I notice the pain in my neck, then my cheek, then my shoulder, legs, head to say the least everything hurt. I strained to look down only able to move my eyes to check myself out and saw that poking out of the blue gown I was dressed in were both my legs, the relief that washed over me was overwhelming. Besides the fact that I now knew I still possessed the ability to walk I could tell it would be a long recovery. Bandages flowed down my legs and arms and what felt like a bandage around my head. I lied back to cope with the pain.
Moments later without a knock entered both Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford. It startled me and I jumped. They noticed. Their faces when they saw me showed worry but more importantly disgust. I would say it bothered me but I was used to disappointing people, especially Jack. They both stopped a few feet from the foot of the bed. “Will, you're awake.” Said Alana gently, almost as if not to spook a small animal. “Good we need to talk” said Jack with a much more unforgiving tone “give it a rest Jack he just woke up” “No this is important. Will, what do you remember from yesterday” Jack spoke up quickly like the world depended on my answer “I remember talking to reba, and going to the ward to say goodbye to Hannibal–"
I froze and my eyes stopped darting from thinking.
“He’s dead right…?”
Jack stared back with a blank face. While it wasn't obvious his face was covered in surprise at the quick change of topic. “Answer me!” I yelled. “So you remember what happened?” Jack said. How stupid are you? I thought “yes” a pause “I remember, now tell me is Hannibal alive.”
“We haven't found his body yet, he did go off… The cliff with you, correct?”
“Yes–” I spoke dully. Recounting the events of the past day.
“Jack, leave him alone. He's in no state to be talking about this right now.”
Jack stopped and turned facing away. A silence fell over the room for just a moment. After a few seconds he stepped back, looking back at me, making sure to make eye contact “We will talk later.” He raised his eyebrows making his eyes wider and left out the door with no other words leaving me with Alana.
She stepped forward to the left side of my bed and sat down in the chair a few feet from the bed. The pity in her blue eyes almost killed me. “You know you don't have to stay, I'm fine” I said lying, truthfully, having another person around to ask questions about what happened would've helped a lot but alana being that person would have been torturous. Alana clearly didn't believe I was fine as she just kept staring. I also wasn't so convincing as I had unwillingly flinched at every mention of him.
“Will. Im your friend im just worried– is there anything you can tell me about yesterday”
“Like what.”
“After the police shooting what happened with Hannibal, how did you get to the house on the pier”
In that instant of his name being mentioned my vision darkened and I unwillingly jumped. The shame I felt for reacting to just his name was immense. I should've been happy he was dead, but rather I feel dread. Whatever that means anyways.
Alana saw me jump and looked down in sorrow. “Clearly now's not the time, I hope you get better, I really do.” With that she hurried out the room. By the way she sounded it was like there was a double meaning.
Finally, on my own now I recounted the day. Most of it was a blur. Not only from my foggy memory but also because everything happened so fast, it was hard to take it all in.
The first thing of importance I remembered was the car ride with him in the cage. I'm still not sure how everything happened. One second I'm staring at the ground and feeling his burning gaze on my scalp. The next the cage is open my ears are ringing and he's out of the straight jacket. How he pulled it off I would never know. Especially now since he's dead.
Then I skipped to the house.
I remember a blast and him falling on the floor. When dolarhyde jumped through the broken window and commanded “don’t run” I knew this was it. Either we were done for or this was finally the time I would see him kill, and I would help him. It turned out to be the latter. Why had I done that, I could've just stood back and watched…
The last thing I remember was the cliff. How did I survive that? Why am I alive... That was supposed to end it all. The final act in our play. I shouldn't be here.
Panic bubbling I had to get some air. I sat up and started to pull out the iv and the pads on my chest when I heard a knock on the door. I froze, caught in the action of escape. I hurriedly sat back against the bed and tried to act natural when the door gently creaked open. I wasn't looking at the face of the person who walked in, instead I was staring at their shoes. I could often decipher who they were based on their shoes.
But these ones were too familiar. The dark brown leather oxfords took my breath away. This can't be real. How did he get here? He should be dead. My eyes quickly flashed up to the man's face in front of me. It was him.
“Will you need to move on. I'm gone and you killed me. You killed me, will.”
“No. no please.” I pleaded.
“Will you've finally accepted who you are.” Hannibal said. I stared in horror as he was slowly becoming horribly disfigured.
First he had a gunshot wound to the head.
“You did this to me,” he said.
I was transported to the hobbs house back in their kitchen where garrett jacob hobbs was shot, then myself. But in this reality it was Hannibal who was shot. His blood and guts splattered over my face. Jack was too slow. The look in his eyes was one of horror and of betrayal.
“I'm sorry. This isn't my fault.” I had no control over what was happening. Tears streamed down my face as my head felt it would explode.
We were back in the hospital room. Is it over? I blinked.
Now I was in a room I'd never seen. Hannibal was hanging high up above me. His arms tied up into a cross. I’d never seen this before, but I knew what this was. Dead, and hanging from a noose, words muttered from seemingly nowhere came out in Hannibal's voice.
“You did this to me,” he said.
“You never died, this wasn't me!” I pleaded
Hannibal's cold face turned to me, he was blue, swaying in the wind. his face melted away showing his bone structure.
“Stop." I fell to my knees, squeezing my eyes shut as hard as I could bear trying to leave this never ending mirage. I had to get out of here. “Just make it stop”
Everything went quiet. Is it over…? My eyelids lifted.
The room was empty. But it wasn't the same room. It wasn't a room at all. Instead, I was staring at a large window with a gun in my hand. I couldn't see through the window, but I could see my surroundings. To the left of me there was a cliff, the cliff.
I felt a stinging pang of uneasiness travel down my spine.
I fought the nerves forcing me to do this as hard as I could, but to no avail. The gun raised towards the window, now I could see through it. I saw myself and him. He was holding the same wine bottle we never got to crack open that night. I wasn't in my own body, I was watching myself interact with him.
The gun raised.
Bang.
My legs were moving without meaning to. I ran through the broken glass window. “Dont move.” I commanded to my own face and forcefully turned to Hannibal, gun still raised.
“I can't stop, please forgive me.” Words I would have never spoken came slipping out of my mouth.
“You should've chose life, Dr. Lecter”
I set up a camera without looking. Never taking my eyes off of him. I pressed play on the camera and lifted the gun forced to look into the scope. Forced to pull the trigger. Forced to watch as brains and great amounts of blood filled the room. His disfigured body lay in front of me. His blown out head pulsed as if trying to speak, like he was still alive, like the pink clump of meat below him still had thoughts. He obviously wasn't alive.
“You did this to me.” he said
“I'm sorry…” it came out as a whispered mess. “How much longer will you make me endure this!” I screamed to seemingly no one. He wasn't forcing me to see these things, but it felt like it. It felt like I was suffocating in the arms of my captor.
The room had started to fill with blood the moment the gun had gone off. It hadn't registered to me until the blood was up to my knees, that was only a few seconds after the ear ringing sound from the gun. Logically if I waited any longer I would be drowning in blood within a minute. In my horror I stood quickly to run out in an attempt to escape the large red rising bath. As though I stood too quickly, my vision spotted and I almost passed out, but I didn't. Rather than passing out I fell into the slippery red mass growing under me. I was covered head to toe. My vision went red. Disgusted in myself I tried my hardest to get the viscous red liquid out of my eyes.
When my vision cleared I was outside the house, thankfully, but instead of the red sea being the last nightmare I had to withstand I first had to see one more. The cliff. First Hannibal was in front of me. I couldn't move, forced to look at him in his sorrowed eyes.
A snap. Now we were embracing each other, just like before. “This is all I wanted for, you will. For both of us.” I backed up and held Hannibal by the shoulders looking into his face, it was like a magnet I couldn't look away.
In one swift motion I threw him off the cliff. And he let me. Simultaneously my point of view left my body. I was hovering on the top of the clif, seeing the entire drop down. Time slowed as if to drag out my terror. Directly under the jump there was a jagged rock jutting out above the surface. I luckily missed it the first time. Unfortunately for Hannibal he landed dead on the spike, exploding over the cove.
His intestines wrapped around many rocks showing above the water surface, organs displayed, water turned dark red “it really does look dark in the moonlight” a voice said repeating in a whisper.
If you were looking at me with an outside view you would've seen a man wrecked both physically and emotionally. My pupils dilated, my hair was scruffed, I was still sticky all over from the dried blood, and I had just watched the one person that had ever understood me die, for the second time.
“Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.”
Bedelia's voice echoed through the vast hollow of my current state of mind.
It was the last thing I could comprehend before everything went white.
I was curled on my side, hands holding me down keeping me still from thrashing, suffocating me. Then, a sharp jab into my arm, everything cut to a black nothingness where I couldn't think. It was peaceful.