Chapter Text
BLACK.
It swarms, engulfs, it's without noise, just a blank space between his ears...Where his hollow head lies empty. Dead.
The burning of a blade shines through, red light behind his eyes, and the singe of tasteless pain. The smell of iron and rust.
Then, his eyes open to papers. They float everywhere, like oversized snowflakes, drifting all over... His vision shifts, like optical zoom in a lens to quick to follow or trace, lines of light lead away to...
Hannibal's office. And it is alight with the flicker of the robust fire, the kidling crackling, spitting and illuminating a hospital bed in the center of the room, replacing the dark-wooded desk. Bloodstains have saturated through the bedding, fluid bags, and machinery hover over the once-white sheets. It's empty. Abandoned.
Will's eyes move from surface to surface before he attempts bending down to pick up a sheet, even as more rain down... Blue eyes scan the poster.
WANTED: MURDER: Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Age 49, Considered to be extremely dangerous, Last seen in Baltimore, Maryland.
A sickening swell of fear fell over his somehow upright body...
Pain erupts in his gut at the sound of his mate's voice, so close to his ear, " When we've gone from this life, I will always have this place..." Hannibal's voice sounds different, pained...He should have seen the signs. " My palace is vast, even by medieval standards." Will can feel the ache in his abdomen grow with each word, he can feel the heat of Hannibal's tongue flick across the shell of his ear.
"The foyer is the Norman Chapel in Palermo, severe and beautiful, and timeless... A single reminder of mortality: a skull graven in the floor." He looks to his side, finally able to freely move, but now, black smoke replaces what he was too afraid to look at; too afraid to see.
Will looks to the floor beneath his feet. Each scattered sheet of paper littering the floor, making one large picture, a skull.
* * *
Will's eyes slowly flutter open. He gasps, wincing as air is drawn into his rib cage. With his vision blurry, he starts to take in his surroundings... He squints.
The beeping of machines hits his all too sensitive ears as a figure approaches, " How do you feel?" Will tries to look up, teeth clenched. A man in a lab coat-like material hovers over him, clipboard in hand.
" Thirsty." His tongue was deadly dry, it was even hard to form words. The man, who he assumed was a doctor, lifted a cup with a small straw to his lips. He skirted the staw around with his tongue finally winning the silly game and taking the first swig of cool water. It settled him, he blinked hard, he wasn't in Hannibal's office anymore...He was in a Hospital.
And he didn't die.
The doctor's eyes dart to the door's threshold as he puts the cup back down. " Feel well enough for a visitor?" He smiles and then exits through the door. It's left open, Will tried to crane his neck to see out it... but doesn't see a thing until his visitor enters.
Alana Bloom.
She stands on the threshold still, pale, and in-hospital clothing, a stitched cut on her neck, angry and red. Relife and something else flows through him.
She's alive.
Her smile, and ruffled bed head light up the room, her body moving slowly to Will's bedside. Her eyes looked real yet vacant as her lips began to move and pour out a semblance of sounds that fell on his ears, brain working on overdrive to decrypt it like he was regressed into a vegetive state still. " They told me he knew exactly how to cut me. They said it was surgical. " Will's eyes landed back on her neck, she was close but he couldn't feel her warmth. " He wanted us to live."
Will tried to move, failed, then tried again, his limbs felt nonexistent. He scoffed at the idea that Hannibal wanted anything other than her death. " He left us to die." He muttered, looking down, " He wanted you to die, Alana. And I was-" He stopped at the feeling of his limbs fuzzy, like waking up from a long sleep, chills ran through him, " I was disposable to him. "
He saw her hand cup his, the one with the massive IV it, but he didn't feel it...Why couldn't he feel it? " He gave you a chance to take it all back, and you just kept lying." Will's breath stopped at her words. Eyes widened with what was more truth than a lie.
" I-" Her hand now covered his mouth, he could feel the pressure but not the softness of her skin. He squirmed as the pressure got tighter and tighter. The machines beeped and beeped.
Why weren't the nurses coming??
" Why did you keep lying, Will?" He thrashed against her weight uselessly until her lips were at his ear, same as Hannibals's in the dream of another life. " He didn't give you an ending, not yet, He wants you to find him." Will gasps as the hand is removed. She moves back now, robotic.
Fear runs through him and all he can feel now is his mating bite throbbing. "After everything he's done, you would still want me to go to him?"
The thing that isn't Alana nodded like her head is on hinges where the stitches were placed. Will starts to think she's more him than her...More apart of Will's subconscious than real...So that means.
He must be having this conversation with himself. " You belong to him, Will. Do you think this would separate what conjoined? What is made to be whole?"
Alana's voice fades, like a soft wind in summer fleeting away from his fevered mind as his eyes shut once more, and the world is back to black.
Will awoke to the shy beeping of a machine, his own heartbeat... just the one.
His eyes flicked open for the third time, although this time, things feel different. Real. He looks down, his abdomen is stitched tight and bandaged, his eyes well up with tears.
He's gone.
" Now Mr. Graham, we have to of course deal with the fact that-" The real doctor riddled off condolences, false hopes, and last rights of his manually aborted pup. Will starts to shake, the absence setting in, the empty. " The loss of a pup is a-" More words, more eyes looking at him as the nurses assessed his condition.
" Again, we are terribly sorry for your loss, if there's anythin-"
Nothing the doc says can curb his anger, his all right rage, it carries him. Will raises his non-wire attached hand as far as he can lift it. " Leave." He gestures. He doesn't blink and waits for his command to take heed. The man just stares at him...
" But we have more to discu-"
" Now!" Will's voice isn't the pitch of an omega, it's one of pain and anguish, his voice now sounds like an alpha gone wrong.
They all scurry out and he is left to listen to the heart monitor, which then he soon detaches in a rage. He breaks down, curling into himself. Tears flooding his eyes, the sting in his gut a reminder of what he's lost. Of Who he's lost.
" You just kept lying, why did you keep lying?" The words echo, thump and bend over the hospital walls. Until he's only left with himself and the sinking realization of how alone truly he is...
* * *
It feels like weeks before he allows the hospital staff to stay longer than he previously allows. He eats his meals in utter silence and wonders why he even attempts to nourish a body without life in it. The food is bland and tasteless, he doesn't go near the jello, each bite makes him think unwanted thoughts about you know who's cooking...How good it was, even though it was people.
His mating mark burns a deep red whenever he even thinks of him. He avoids using his proper name in his thoughts, the longing has less bite that way. Still, the pain from his seemingly nearly healed wound ebbs, he refuses any more meds from his IV. Will cant feel much, but he can feel pain, he wants to, it grounds him.
One day he picks up something from just listening to the nurses as they bring him his lunch...
That Jack, luckily, is alive and well. Well..recovering. His life saved by the very alpha instinct to survive and not to remove the glass from his jugular.
They bussed about this and that while Will got stronger, until one day he heard something that just didn't sound right, didn't sound real... " Eight months? How- how is that possible?" Will asked a female, omega by the smell of her, she tilted her head shyly, holding her clipboard to her chest.
" Mr. Graham you were in a coma-"
" A what?" The shock of being away for him so long now made sense, the pain in his neck, the stirring in his gut... He'd been away from his alpha for too long. It was making him sick.
" A coma." She says again, even softer like Will would pounce on her if he had the chance. He wouldn't..Would he?
Will grits his teeth, " Yes I know what that is I was just-" He ran a hand through his long-wait what- his curls felt heavier than normal, he sat up and they fell around his neck. " I didn't feel that long."
The nurse nodded and turned away, but before she steps out completely she turns and looks at him, " There's someone here to see you if you-" She pauses, " If you up for it."
Will nods, it would be good to see a familiar face. But the face is not one he expects it to be...
" Chiton, shit, what happened to you?" Will almost laughs seeing the man hobble with a cane over to his bed, a large bouquet of flowers in hand.
" Same thing that happened to you I suppose," He doesn't laugh, but it seems like some sort of laughter would cut the tension that had arisen.
" And what's that?" Will asks, small smile, first one in a long time threatens to displace his permanent scowl. It goes back to where it belongs when Chilton speaks again.
" A psychopath got too close to me."