Notes: I definitely should not be starting another fic while I am still in the middle of working on my Caged series. Especially not when I am recovering from an operation on my hand that is making it very difficult to type. I am trying to deny that the season two finale ever happened, but this story idea just wouldn't leave me alone. I see this as being a slow-burn, with the primary relationship being between Chilton and Will, although it will definitely have some elements of Hannigram.
My work isn't proof-read. Thank you very much for having a look at this and I do hope you enjoy it.
There is a man in a brown suit at the end of the bed when Will Graham wakes up for the first time.
For a moment he panics, heart rate rocketing, gasping in the oxygen that is coming in through a plastic mask strapped to his face. He is too weak, too sore, to move, and that scares him even more.
The man is not Hannibal Lecter, though; Will realises from the shorter, slimmer frame of the man, and the way he leans heavily on a cane, that this is Frederick Chilton.
Will doesn't understand why he is here.
Chilton is talking to a nurse, but they both turn when they hear the sudden increase in Will's heart rate on the machines he is hooked up to.
Chilton's face blurs, and Will loses consciousness again.
Frederick Chilton is reading a book to Will. He hasn't noticed that Will's eyes are open, staring at him. He is wearing a navy blue suit now, sitting down in a chair beside the bed, glasses perched on the end of his nose.
Will doesn't understand what he is reading. The words are an oddly soothing monotone, but they mean nothing.
How long has he been here? How long has Chilton been with him?
He fights the urge to drift back off into blessed unconsciousness. Memories are clouded and vague, shrouded in grey in his mind, but he fights through them.
"Abigail?" he chokes out eventually, and the word is muffled and useless against the oxygen mask.
Chilton looks up suddenly, surprised. He closes the book and reaches across to help Will remove the oxygen mask. A tear escapes from Will's eye and splashes against Chilton's fingers and Chilton pauses, flushing suddenly.
They don't know each other well enough to share this moment, but who else do they have? Will feels sick as he ponders this.
"Abigail?" he repeats again, and his throat hurts as he speaks.
Chilton covers Will's hand with his own but Will snatches it away. He doesn't want to be touched, not by anyone, not ever again. The look in Chilton's eyes tells him that Abigail is dead. He remembers covering her opened throat, her blood covering him as they lay dying on the floor together.
Another tear breaks free and Chilton watches it without moving.
"I'm sorry," Chilton says finally, in a quiet voice.
There is a question in Will's eyes, but he can't choke it out. Chilton looks at him through his glasses.
"She died before help arrived. There was nothing anyone could do." He chews his lip. "I'm sorry," he repeats uselessly.
Will closes his eyes. He had come to terms with Abigail's death, accepted it. It seems impossible to do the same again. We are her fathers now. He feels sick and wonders for a moment if he is going to vomit.
He reaches for the mask, covers his face with it and takes a deep breath before removing it and asking, "Alana? Jack?"
"Alana Bloom is alive, but she is... she won't walk again," Chilton says. "Jack is alive."
Will nods, digesting this information.
He thinks back to the moment when Hannibal gutted him, then held him close. Will can't believe that he lived through it.
He doesn't want to be alive.
Another tear rolls down his face. He is too weak to give into the desire to properly cry; he wonders how Chilton would react if he broke down.
"How long have I been here?" he asks eventually, struggling to catch his breath after such a long utterance.
"Eight days," Chilton replies.
"Hannibal will have... a tan by now," Will gasps, and voicing Hannibal's name feels like being stabbed all over again. He is too exhausted to properly feel anger, but he knows it is inside him, built up and ready to be released.
Chilton nods. "It looks like he has left the country."
Will closes his eyes again, blocking out Chilton's earnest face. He is again in Hannibal's arms, clutching onto the shoulders of a man he had come to love, in the darkest and most horrible sense. Hannibal is murmuring words into his ear, and he lowers him gently to the floor before reaching for Abigail.
He was supposed to leave.
Will speaks, and he thinks it startles Chilton, who must think he has drifted back into unconsciousness. "How long have you been here?"
An uncomfortable pause. "Seven days."
So Chilton has been here almost the entire time. The discovery of the scene at Hannibal's house would have caused him to be released, then he must have come almost straight here.
Will wants to ask him why. He looks at him closely. It has been so long since he saw Chilton last, so long since Chilton had turned up at his house of all places. He looks older, shadowed around the eyes. The scar on his face is almost perfectly round, not too hideous really, but a telling reminder of what Hannibal has done to him.
This is why Chilton is here.
Their lives have both been ruined by Hannibal. Chilton trusts Will- that is why he came to Will's house for help. Will suspects that Chilton trusts even fewer people than Will himself.
They have both been the Chesapeake Ripper, and they have both been toyed with by him.
Will doesn't know if he is glad that Chilton is here or not. He looks at the book lying closed on Chilton's lap.
"What are you reading me?" he asks.
Chilton winces slightly. "Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson."
Will almost smiles.
Chilton blushes a little- Will can't remember ever seeing him blush before, and it's strangely endearing- and he puts the book to one side. "I needed to make sure you were going to be fine."
Will takes a deep breath of oxygen. "It seems that I am, although I haven't seen a doctor yet," he says, raising an eyebrow pointedly.
"Oh! Oh, sorry." Chilton stands up and grabs his cane, hobbling to the door of the bright white hospital room. Will hears him calling out for a doctor.
He returns with a doctor who is wearing a fake smile. "Mr Graham, good to see that you're awake," the doctor says brightly. "My name is Dr Goschen, and I've been looking after you."
"What's the damage?" Will asks, his eyes subconsciously flickering over to Chilton's cane. He doesn't want that. He needs to be physically able to carry out the reckoning he promised, the reckoning which is now even more deserved.
"You lost a lot of blood, but luckily there was no major organ trauma. You'll be weak for a while, but I'm confident that you'll make a full recovery."
"Good. How long until I can get out of here?"
"A few days longer, Mr Graham."
Will sighs- he needs to leave as soon as possible, but he supposes there is not a lot he can do about it. He nods and Dr Goschen leaves.
Chilton sits back down, and Will breathes in his aftershave. It is not unpleasant but it is expensive, the sort of thing Hannibal would have liked. His stomach turns at the thought. Chilton makes eye contact and looks away suddenly, as if it is he, and not Will, who dislikes it.
"I hope you don't mind me being here," Chilton says.
Will's instinct is to make a cutting remark, because he doesn't really know Chilton, because he sure as hell doesn't trust him and because he doesn't even like him. He remembers Chilton when he was his captor, of sorts, and for a moment he really wants to hurt him. But he doesn't, because the mark on Chilton's ruined cheek reminds him that they are bonded in this, and for some crazy reason, Chilton trusts him. "No," is all he says.
Chilton gives a half-smile, and Will idly wonders how easy it would be to crush this man. The cruelty of the thought surprises him, and it tastes like Hannibal. Will frowns at himself.
Chilton notices the frown, and his smile fades. "Will," he says tentatively, and Will can tell he is still unused to the way the name feels in his mouth, weighing his tongue around it.
He looks tired. Will forces a smile, the empty one he wears most often. "Go home," he says. "Get some rest. I'll still be here in the morning."
Chilton suddenly looks right into Will's eyes, and Will is uncomfortable. Chilton's eyes are a strange, opaque blue-green. They are bright and intense.
"Do you want me to come back tomorrow?" Chilton asks.
"Yes."
Chilton nods and stands up. He hesitates, then removes an expensive-looking pen from his pocket and jots something down on the blank pad of paper by the bed. As he leans over to do so, Will again breathes in his aftershave, and this time it doesn't seem too bad.
"The number of the hotel I'm staying at," he says awkwardly, gesturing towards the numbers he has written down. "If you need me."
Will knows he has a rough night ahead, a night of lying awake thinking about Hannibal and Abigail. A night of remembering Hannibal's hand on his face, Hannibal's disappointed eyes, Hannibal's breath on his throat. A night of remembering those brief few seconds in which Abigail was alive.
Will knows he won't call Chilton, but he nods.
"Goodnight," Chilton says.
"Goodnight," Will replies.