It feels like he's dreaming.
He's had many fantasies like this-entering Hannibal's house with a gun, calculating the weight of each footstep before he takes a step, holding in his breath to appear completely silent. In his fantasies, though, there is not blood all over the floor. He steps around it carefully and edges into the room, gun raised.
He can pretend this is a dream. He can control his breathing and point the gun and pull the trigger and finally, finally end all of this-
Abigail.
The fantasy shatters and cracks into a million tiny slivers that stick in his throat when he chokes out her name, "Abigail?" She has never been in his dreams of killing. In his dreams, she is whole(both ears) and she is radiant and glowing and smiling, and they wade into the river together and cast out their lines-
This is reality.
This is real, and this Abigail is standing across from him and sobbing, not glowing, muted by dark colors and a stitched whole in the side of her head. She watches him, her hands shaking, lips pressed together, expression crumbling and he wants to run to her and also away from her-
"I didn't know what to do," she whispers, and it's her voice real and sweat, and young, and breaking, "so I just did what he told me."
Will feels the calm rage settling in the pit of his stomach. He looks at her and asks, "Where is he?" but he already knows. He knows in the widening of her eyes and the hitch of her breath, but some subconscious part of him has always known, because Lecter is his shadow, always following.
He turns, and surprises even himself a little with the raw trembling of his voice, "You were supposed to leave."
Hannibal is looking at him, his eyes hooded. He is covered in blood, the white of his shirt standing out stark, like a slap. There's blood on his lips coming from his nose, but his breathing is perfectly steady. Will feels his breath catch a little, because Hannibal has never really looked at him like this-all calculated rage and dark emotion.
"We couldn't leave without you," he says, and it is almost sad.
Will can only stare, held in by those dark, dark eyes that made him fond of eye contact, the eyes that he can meet because they mirror each other, he and Lecter. Hannibal is the darkest parts of his soul breathing and living in front of him, the aspects of himself he knows and fears are there. The part of him that is capable of murder.
Hannibal's fingers curl gently around his cheek, his neck, twine through his hair in a familiar gesture. His eyes are black pools, and Will drowns in them.
It is sudden.
In half a second Hannibal's hands are gentle, and then suddenly the muscles tighten and Will stumbles forward, falls-
The knife is cold.
It's a single, bizarrely lucid thought, but it is all he has before the pain breaks him.
He can hear himself gasping, ragged and raw, feel the blood spreading across his shirt, falling to the floor. He's distantly aware that his knees are buckling and Hannibal is catching him, Hannibal always catches him.
He crashes against the doctor's body, all screaming nerves and strangled breaths, and Hannibal cradle's him, strokes his hair and presses him close to whisper.
Will can't understand the words, only the pain and the blinding croon of the spider-thing, the doctor that got so deep into his head that he is never going to be able to get out.
Finally he hears, "Do you understand?"
He shakes his adamantly because no, no, no, no, he doesn't understand how it can hurt this much.
Hannibal whispers something more, but then Will is sliding to the floor, and Hannibal let's him go.
Will is still lucid enough to press against the wound, even when he feels the blood hot and sticky against his fingers and breathing feels like being stabbed all over again, and-
Abigail has her hands over her mouth, but she's not crying. Maybe she expected this all along. Maybe this has always been part of their plan.
Hannibal beckons to her, and Will knows, he knows, but he can't get enough breath in his lungs to protest loud enough before the knife is in her throat.
Her blood hits his face, warm like shower water, and he flinches back before she falls down beside him. It's like that very first case all over again-Abigail bleeding out on the floor of a kitchen, her gasps loud and harsh in his ears.
"You can make it all go away, Will..." Hannibal's voice, despite the circumstances, is still soothing. Will can sink back into the dream...the fantasy, pieces those broken shards back together again and lose himself...
But Abigail is convulsing next to him.
So he crawls towards her, presses one bloodied hand to her neck and through his own ragged breaths tries to soothe her. "Shhh, shhh..."
Hannibal leaves them.
Will presses his forehead down to Abigail's chest, digs his hand as hard as he can into her neck and listens to the shuddering beats of her heart.
He can feel his own heart, pulsing through the wound in his stomach and the blood that is spread out across the kitchen floor, staining his clothes, his cheek, his hands. One arm is still wrapped around his stomach, even as Abigail chokes around his fingers.
Finally, though, he can't stand it anymore.
He turns his face back, sees the dying stag, shuddering for breath across from them, and wades into the stream.
He wants to speak, to tell Abigail to come with him, but when he closes his eyes, she is already there.
The water is cool against his knees as they wade into the river, him and Abigail. She turns her head, the sun catching on her hair and the brilliant white of her teeth. "You caught him, Will." She says.
Will looks at her, hands her a fishing rod and flicks out his line. "I tried." He says. "But he got me first."
Her hand slips into his, warm and real and comforting. "You were so close."
The river around them turns red with blood, and suddenly the pain is real, sharp and stabbing in his stomach. He doubles over. "Abigail-"
"You're waking up," her eyes were sad, reflecting the water around them-deep and red-blue.
"Abigail-"
"Goodbye, Will," she whispers, and turns her attention back to the stream and the fish. 'Good luck fishing."
His eyes fly open.
He's in a hospital. The room is blindingly white, blinding like pain, and he clenches his eyes shut against its brightness.
"Mr. Graham?" The voice is gentle and foreign, and he flinches away from it. "Mr. Graham, how are you feeling?"
Slowly, Will forces his eyes open, sucks in a shallow breath. Breathing hurts. Moving hurts. "I-"
The nurse sitting beside his bed smiles gently. "Take your time."
But Will can't take his time. Alana and Jack and Abigail-
His body moves with his mind, fast and sudden, and pain explodes across his abdomen. The nurse is on her feet as he falls back, choking and wrenching, bile rising in his throat because there is no possible way they all survived, none at all...
The nurse is shouting orders to someone and hands are on him, running up and down his back, his shoulders, soothing, calming, but Will is broken. He empties his stomach in violent, painful heaves, and then finally presses his forehead against the railing of the hospital bed and sobs.