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Will awakes from a brief rest, after yet another night - month - year of sleeplessness. Sleep is like the last killer, the one that keeps evading his capture, and now it has its sights set on him as its final victim. It won’t take him, though, because that would be too easy; instead, it tortures him, slowly. It pulls at his nails and runs blades along his skin and pushes him to breaking point and far beyond, but still he battles it. He fights and prays and hopes and wishes that someday, somehow, he will overcome it and with that will come peace. He cannot do more than that.
He is seeing clearly now, despite the exhaustion that sags his body and aches in his bones. The links are illuminated and they hound him as he reaches for that one final detail that will bring complete clarity: the identity of the copycat killer. Georgia’s death – Georgia’s murder – still weighs heavily on his mind, as do the lingering effects of sleep deprivation and fever. Jack doesn’t see the connections, Jack thinks he’s crazy. Will wonders what else is new. He needs something real.
Abigail
It gets so cold in the winter. Will, always one to flinch away from touch, is finally learning the chilling sense of yearning that comes with an empty bed while snow falls and rest is fleeting. He thinks that, perhaps, if a warm body lay beside him, he might not feel the gaps as intensely. They would be filled with the steady puffs of air and the constant thrum of a heartbeat. Will needs that, needs something constant, something real and live and enduring to keep him anchored. He doesn’t want to drift away again. Losing time is losing sight and losing sense, and Will so desperately wants to not feel lost anymore.
Abigail
The name keeps echoing through his mind, but he shrugs it off. Each time he hears it, he feels a pang in his chest. No. He won’t believe it because it isn’t true, it can’t be true.
Abigail
Will feels his brow dampen with sweat, the shakiness of the fever starting to return. He sits in place to avoid the crash, trying to settle his breathing and stop the spinning of his head. A dog wanders over, but he can’t find its name. He holds it, tightening his grip so that maybe his hold on reality will stay too. He hears ringing, oh god, the ringing is starting again, and he’s so alone and what if the ringing never stops and then
It stops.
It stops abruptly and Will relaxes slightly, confused. Then it rings again. Will brings himself back to his feet. It rings again, and is followed by a pounding. Knocking on wood. And a call.
“Will? Is everything okay in there?”
It is as though all of the tension rushes out of his body simultaneously. His head still spins and the pains are still there, but they are out of focus now. He makes his way to the door and opens it, and there she is, standing on his doorstep.
He exhales her name, the final remnants of fear leaving with it.
“Alana.”
Her smile is careful and hesitant, but still she steps over the threshold. She raises a hand as if to touch him, but lowers it again.
“May I?”
His nod is her permission, and she places her hand to his forehead. Whatever smile she has falls from her face as her hand falls from his.
“Are you feeling okay, Will?”
“I’m fine. Better than I have been, anyway.” Better now
She pauses. “Jack told me that you had checked yourself out. I thought I’d check in.” They laugh, though it isn’t funny, because both of them need to. “I’ll make you tea.”
“Need I remind you, Miss Bloom, that this my house?” She raises an eyebrow at him and walks towards the kitchen.
They sit on the floor with their backs resting on the sofa. The space heater is on full blast in front of them, but in a Wolf Trap winter, it is still cold enough that they have moved together close enough to share the only throw blanket that Will owns. The dogs have settled in around them, and Will can’t help but grin as he sneaks glimpses of Alana cuddling up to them. They have finished their tea in relative silence. It’s a warm and heavy silence and it washes over Will, weighing on his eyelids. He feels words slipping from his mouth but he doesn’t hear them because no sooner than they are out, he starts slipping.
It’s slipping, but it doesn’t feel like losing.
Will feels like he has won.
When he wakes up, he feels refreshed. It’s strange.
The spinning of his head has settled and clarity has returned. The connections are strengthening. Abigail. He will deal with that later. For now, he wants to settle into this. He wants to – he does – feel the weight of Alana’s head on his shoulder, and despite his initial instincts, he has no desire to shake it off. He wants to smell her perfume [he is no Hannibal, but what he does smell is home, and home smells like vanilla and wood and melted snow from the leaves of the trees and Alana and his dogs] and feel her skin on his and his hands in her hair [hair so dark and skin so pale and Abigail he wants her to stay here and tether him]. Will pretends he is not a sentimental man but with so much in his life that feels dangerous, he wants to bottle this moment and drink from it when the pain gets too much and the darkness seems too thick.
He feels her waking before he sees it. She shifts and sniffles [an animal racing from a man with a gun who holds it steady and pulls the trigger and Abigail] and then sits up straight, alert, breaking them apart.
“I thought I was too unstable for cuddling in front of the space heater.” Slowly, he moves his hand to hers and squeezes it, consent for her to touch and to take; she touches.
“Can anyone be too unstable for that?”
“And what happened to your professional curiosity?”
There’s a hesitance when she speaks. “I’ll always be curious about you, Will. But it doesn’t take a degree in psychology to know that you’ve been through an incredible amount of trauma recently, and I’d be failing as a friend if I didn’t come to see you.”
They fall back into silence but he feels unsaid words resting in her throat.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not,” she lies, but self-corrects. “I trust you.”
He puts his arm around her shoulders and she doesn’t shy from his touch, and though part of him wants to take her face in his hands and speak assurances against her skin, for now this is perfect.
“I have to ask, Will…about what you said before.”
“What did I say?”
“Before you fell asleep. ‘You saved me.’ What did you mean?”
Will wants to say something half-true and hide under the illusion of stability, but Alana knows him. If he can’t be honest with her, he doesn’t know who he can turn to. He struggles with the words but when she looks at him, they come tumbling out anyway. “I was…I am…It’s getting harder to hold on to reality. I feel as though I’m falling in and out of dreams and nightmares and getting stuck behind barriers that I feel my mind putting up. You…” he withdraws his arm, but she reaches for his hand and holds it with hers and with her eyes on him, he is vulnerable. “You ground me. Before you came, I could feel myself slipping, but you came and pulled me back.”
She is silent, and he freezes.
“You look like a deer caught in headlights, Will.” She laughs. Abigail. “We should…we should do this again. I think you need this. In my professional opinion." He laughs properly at that.
She’s right. Alana’s always right.
“I think I need this too. But right now, there is something I need to do.”
Abigail
“Be careful. If not for anyone else, then for me.”
“I will.”
His anchor raises and Will is rendered adrift, but he doesn’t mind because he knows that she will return.