Title: let them sleep

Author: kyrilu

Rating: PG-13. Choose not to warn; canon-typical mentions of violence/cannibalism/etc.

Fandom: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter — All Media Types.

Pairings/Characters: Gen. Jack Crawford & Will Graham, Bella Crawford & Will Graham, Alana Bloom & Will Graham, Will Graham & Abigail Hobbs. Mentions of canon Alana/Will. Jack/Will and Bella/Will if you squint (pre-OT3, to be honest: Bella/Jack/Will. NO REGRETS.)

Summary: That looming animal of Will's nightmares didn't go away. It didn't go away, even though Dr. Lecter was behind bars now, even though the remains of corpses in his stomach has probably long been digested, even though Jack had held him on the office floor with a linoleum knife sticking from his hip and said, "It's over now, Graham, we've got him, the ambulance is coming—"

Author's Notes: This fic is a mishmash of the Hannibal Lecter canons; I made my own changes along the way. Some of this fic was written before the more recent episodes came out. I've tried to make some things fit, but as you can see, no mention of Will's encephalitis.

Later, Will thought he could see the flash of Lounds' camera behind his eyelids. He was sure he had dreamt of it - the sound, at least, the flicker of the camera transforming into raven wings.

Raven wings, raven feathers, raven fur on the back of a clip-clop-clip-clopping stag.

That looming animal of Will's nightmares didn't go away. It didn't go away, even though Dr. Lecter was behind bars now, even though the remains of corpses in his stomach had probably long been digested, even though Jack had held him on the office floor with a linoleum knife sticking from his hip and said, "It's over now, Graham, we've got him, the ambulance is coming-"

Jack. Jack Crawford. Will focused on him, instead of the darkness that he had seen in Lecter's eyes. I'm fine. I'm not Miriam Lass, he had reassured Jack, hours before Lecter had gutted him. I'm getting close, Jack, I think I can get him.

He shut out the memory quickly. He was breathing hard; he had to calm down or he was going to have a panic attack. This wasn't the first time in the hospital he was on the brink of experiencing one - he had woken up earlier, and didn't know where he was, and the nurses couldn't calm him down. The slide of a needle in his arm had made him scream-

"Will," said Jack Crawford, interrupting his thoughts.

Will blinked. The back of his neck was thick with sweat; his hip was throbbing with remembered pain. He hadn't noticed the door opening.

"Jack," he said, and then all the words came out. "I'm sorry, Jack, I should've known sooner. Everything clicked, when I was talking to him - and he saw it in my face. I couldn't reach my gun in time. He said he had to kill me. He said..."

(that he was going to eat my heart)

"You don't need to tell me this now, Will," Jack said, his voice pitched deep and soothing.

Will could read the emotions etched on Jack's face: concern, guilt, exhaustion. Not Miriam Lass; not Miriam Lass. Will released a breath, thought for a moment, and said, "Who was in my room?"

"Freddie Lounds." Jack pulled out his cellphone, opened to the home page, and Will's eyes darted across the screen until he found the headline and the picture.

There he was. Sleeping, angry red scar prominent on his skin, the blankets shrugged off to the sides. CRAZY GUTS COP, the words read.

Will gently turned Jack's hand over, so that the phone was angled away.

Jack looked stricken for a moment. Then the expression was gone, and Jack said, "We thought you should know. The FBI has detained Lounds, but she's bound to find some way out. I suspect she's got contacts within our agents. But I promise she won't bother you in the meantime. Just...get some rest, Graham."

"You've increased security?"

"Yes. I've changed the guards and told them to only let people cleared by me come in. It's been hell, Will - the public's in a frenzy. It's a goddamned freak show to them: a psychiatrist cannibal who actually worked with the police."

"And me," Will said with a self-deprecating smile.

"Most of the press sees you as a hero, Will," Jack said, shaking his head. Which, of course, made Will's mouth twist into a frown, and Jack sighed. "It's done. The case is finished. You're going to go, aren't you?"

"I don't know."

"I'm not going to stop you," Jack said. "We can help you relocate, if you want. Change your name, find you a house."

Abruptly, Will said, "When's the trial?"

He didn't want to think about running away. Not yet. The case wasn't finished, and Will was going to push on. See Lecter go to Death Row or put away for life. Maybe the stag would go away, maybe the animals would stop clawing into his brain.

"In a month or so," Jack said. "Rest, Will. Don't think about it."

But his thoughts were racing, nevertheless. He was slipping into Lecter's skin; he was putting on those dark eyes and moving around the blood with an artist's hands.

"What did you find in his basement?" Will whispered softly. "It was in his basement, wasn't it? Or did he have a storage shed somewhere? He'd have to have a freezer or something to keep all of the bodies. So when he took them out, they were fresh - fresh meat-"

Jack gripped his shoulder. "Stop," he said.

Will's eyes were wet. "It tasted good, Jack, all that fucking food-"

"Stop."

He gasped, and emerged, and he breathed out strings of nonsense words that were Jack instead, his phrasings and his syntax and his cadence, expelling Hannibal Lecter from his body.

Jack held the back of his neck, forcing eye contact, and Will shuddered, but he was glad.

"It did taste good," Jack said, like the sentence was wrenched out of him. "He fed me, you, Bella, Dr. Bloom - all of his house guests. And it was inhuman. Revolting. I couldn't eat for days. It's my fault that after so long I couldn't recognize him. I'm your boss. I'm the agent who's been chasing after him for years."

Will shuddered again. For a second, he tried to absolve himself - only for a moment - so that maybe Jack, indomitable, blazing Jack, could stand in the way between Will Graham and the burden that fell on his shoulders. Will was restructuring himself; Will was scrabbling to make tools. Tools to kill the dark things that haunted him.

Tools. Weapons was a better word.

"I l-liked him, Jack," Will whispered. "I think we're the same. Whenever I went to talk to him, he'd put on Debussy or Vivaldi and give me sandwiches to eat, and then he'd say horrifying things about the world, and I'd silently agree."

Killing must feel good to God, too.

"You are not Hannibal Lecter," Jack said sharply. "You are a human being, Will. You are not him."

Will shook his head. Gave Jack that smile that showed his teeth, half-laughter and fake, and Jack took hold his wrist and said, "Listen, Will. You're going to do it. You're going to testify and put that bastard away. The first guy who found his basement - you were right, okay? fucking basement of hell - he was scared shitless, got out of the force and ran into the motel industry. It's fine to be scared. It's fine."

Will looked at Jack's fingers on his arm and waited to see if a bruise would form, because he had always been marked by goddamned all of themand he could never stop searching for any solid, physical manifestations. Abigail's blood all over him, Alana's ghost of a kiss on his lips, Lounds' light of the camera reflecting off his glasses, Hannibal's gentle, guiding touches promising false comfort and understanding, fucking bastard.

There was no bruise, however. He sighed and let Jack anchor him; he'd been struggling and fighting and pushing back before, but it was over now. It was okay. To just let Jack hold his wrist like this, and pretend that this isn't an almost-reenactment of him lying prone on Lecter's office floor, Jack taking his pulse: you're alive, you're alive.

"Get some sleep," Jack said. He eyes weren't at all like Lecter's - not pinpricked dark red and reflective, but dark steel warmth.

Will nodded, and fell back into soft blackness.

He woke up with Phyllis Crawford at his bedside. "What-?" Will muttered, the white walls around him almost blinding. He didn't know how much time had passed since Jack had come. "Good - good morning."

Yes. It's morning. He had to glance out the window to know, but he knew that it was morning. Eight-thirty. (His name is Will Graham. He is in Baltimore, Maryland, and Phyllis Crawford is looking at him like he's the most normal person in the world.)

He had met her several times; impromptu dinners with Jack during cases. They hadn't said anything much to each other; Will, as always, avoided as much social interaction as he could, concentrating instead at remembering the murderer he was currently tracking down.

She regarded him coolly. She wore a blouse with a wide neck, and Will made out the shape of a tiny black dot. He averted his eyes, not wanting to be caught staring, but he could feel the tiredness coming off of her, the minute slump in her posture.

He hoped that she would be okay, but he didn't say it aloud. He wondered why she was here.

There was a pile of books on the small table nearby. Will remembered Alana reading to Abigail, but he didn't quite think that Phyllis Crawford was here to play nursemaid.

"Is this for me?" Will asked. They were old books, with yellow pages and bent spines.

"Yes," she said, and she smiled at him. "Jack London, actually. And several other books. Jack said you had dogs. My mother happened to have a fondness for them - they used to run all over our house when I was a girl - and I inherited these from her. I don't like dogs too much myself, so I thought you might like them."

Will carefully took one of the books. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; it was on top of The Call of the Wild. On the cover, there was a boy and a dog with a clock on him. Will cracked a small smile, tracing the Roman numerals on the dog's body. He'd read the book, once, when he was younger - borrowed it from the library and showed it to his father.

"I take it you like them, Mr. Graham?"

"Will," he corrected softly. "Yeah. I do."

"Then call me Bella," she said. "That's good."

"All right. Bella." He put The Phantom Tollbooth back down. "You know. I'm sorry that I didn't stop him - he was feeding everybody. Nobody should have been forced to do that. It's."

"Wrong," she completed, her mouth set in a firm frown. Her forehead was a mess of worry lines. "I know, Will. He was my therapist. I trusted him, too."

Silence, for a moment. Will wished that he was holding the book again, flipping the pages, only to add some semblance of sound in the room, not just the beeping monitors.

Bella broke the stillness. She reached into her purse, pulled out a fold of paper. "Here. I received this yesterday."

Will accepted the piece of paper, and read:

These burning fits but meteors be,

Whose matter in thee is soon spent.

Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,

Are unchangeable firmament.

I am very sorry that we cannot have our appointments any longer. I hope you are well, dear Bella.

"Jesus Christ," he said through his teeth.

"During last session, I told him I began radiation," Bella said, a wry, faint smile upon her face. "I suppose this is his method of being considerate. Jack's trying to make sure that he won't send another letter again, but I'm sure our good doctor will find a loophole." Her eyes were sharp, though - she wasn't hurt, but she was angry, angry in a satisfied way, because she knew, like Will, that Lecter was merely prodding like a stubborn child, last acts of defiance before he got put away for life.

But he would still prod, while in prison, and the person he'd play with especially would be Will. Will knew that, deep down inside him, that Lecter wanted, wanted, wanted his heart on a silver platter - wanted the man who could fit inside his mind and know.

Will inhaled, exhaled, and said, "This shouldn't have happened, either."

Bella shook her head. "No matter how good you are at what you do, Will, I doubt that you can sense whenever he decides to threaten his former patients."

"I don't think he's threatening, exactly," Will said. "It's kind of like that, but. Taunting, maybe, but I think that's too harsh of a word. The smiling mercy of a god to his followers." He met her eyes. "Do you know what I do?"

She must have read sometime, after all. Maybe Jack even told her about him.

But: "No," she said quietly. "I don't think anyone knows exactly what you do, Will, because they don't have it, your senses or empathy or whatever it is. I won't pretend to understand. All I know is that it works. You work, and you help people."

Will's face crumpled, because that was it, that was he needed to hear, that he wasn't broken, he worked, even if his skin was a collection of scars (she had a small dark tattoo and her skin was slightly red), even if Lecter would remember them both, always-

She didn't take his hand or offer him a tissue or even read to him aloud. Instead she placed The Phantom Tollbooth into his palms, and pushed his glasses to his nose.

That was how Alana and Abigail found him. Reading, feeling like a child again, thinking that if he was crazy he would be hearing rain tapping on the windowpanes outside. It was just him, the book, the monitors, the frequent check-ups that the nurses performed.

Abigail ran and hugged him; he could feel her heartbeat against his chest.

"Oh," he said, his voice a tremble. "You knew."

She cried into his hair, and Alana - Will didn't see her face, didn't want to - watched, her presence there, he could sense her. "S-Sorry," she said. "So sorry, Will. Nicholas Boyle. It was an agreement. Please don't- I'm not his accomplice-"

"You were scared," Alana said. She pried Abigail from Will, and faced her stolidly. "It's fine, Abigail. What he did wasn't your fault. It's never your fault; you know it. We'll deal with this later. I promise that you won't be held accountable for anything that he did."

(It's never your fault, she said, and Will tried not to notice the flare in Abigail's eyes: it's something more, it's always something more. But he stayed silent.)

Alana moved forward and folded her hand around Will's arm; her other hand was still on Abigail's shoulder. Linking all three of them; Will Graham and the two women sitting by his bed.

"You feel okay, Will?" Alana asked.

"Just peachy," he said, and Alana grinned. It wasn't very funny, but Will smiled back, sighing as she rubbed his arm softly. He loved her like hell, but he knew she could see him as he was now. He wasn't a pretty sight; not by a long shot.

"Can we," he said, "please not talk about it? Not right now. Anything else but him. Please."

"Of course," Alana said.

Abigail nodded.

Alana added quickly, "I just want you to know, Will, that you're safe. You're not alone. Lounds won't get to you; he won't get to you. We're here. I don't know whatever so-called therapy crap he might've messed you up with, but you're not alone. He was our friend, too."

"Thanks," he whispered.

She squeezed his forearm.

Abigail said, tentative, "What are you reading, Will?" and he breathed out a sigh of relief. They took turns reading the book out loud, smiling and enjoying the juvenile ridiculousness of it, and Will felt like he could forget.

Jack and Bella visited again, several times after - sometimes together, sometimes not. Beverly Katz eventually came, too, bringing him a vase of bright flowers and reassuring him that she was taking care of his dogs.

The date for Lecter's trial was set. Lecter smiled at him beatifically, like Will was a fucking angel, and that was all that Will saw: Lecter's smile, the pictures of his basement, those bodies, those meals.

After testifying, Will ran out to throw up in the bathroom toilet, trying not to sob.

Jack stood outside the stall, leaning against the door. Will attempted to muffle his gasping breaths, the sound wet with tears; he put a hand on the door where Jack leaned, as if that could steady him.

Will offered apologies, platitudes, to Jack on the other side, but Jack refused. He made Will open the door, and he put his hands on Will's shoulders: Let's get you out of here, okay?

He took Will to his house. That was fine; Will knew that the nightmares would come to him if he went back to Wolf Trap, all by himself. Will smiled weakly when Bella opened the door, and felt like he was home.

He thought that everything might turn out okay. It just might.

Dr. Lecter sent to Will:

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go

Will only smiled at the piece of paper grimly, and released it beside the window, where the wind took it far away.

He had work to do.