Will was on a hospital room, alone with a unconscious person yet again.

The nurses and doctors knew him. The cleaning staff knew him. He knew he should have gone home a long time ago. Knew being there was useless. Knew it probably didn't change anything if he stayed – knew that he didn't notice. Understood that he would be of better use investigating the cases they had. Knew this was pointless and wasn't good for him.

But he had to stay there. Needed to.

There was a strange calmness about the hospital bed, so white and clean and peaceful. The curtains were white too and the sheets on the hospital bed. Nobody spoke. Outside, in the real world, many things were happening, kept happening. The world went round – there were students, there were murders, there were people he knew, people he'll meet, people who would forever be strangers. But he didn't want to face all of that. It had been enough, he had enough. Enough darkness, enough pain and nightmare, more than enough thoughts in his head.

But the world seemed to have stopped somehow, in that room. The world was trapped, stopped, frozen. He didn't want it to move.

But it di, time went by, slowly. The seconds that passed were marked by the beeping of the machines. Beep. Beep. Beep. Sometimes the machines and their beeping went crazy and doctors and nurses rushed in and told Will to leave. He didn't like that. He didn't like getting out of his bubble where nothing happened. He liked his little bubble of nothingness, his peace. His angst-ridden, nightmare-plagued, horrible joke of a reality.

Sometimes the outside world appeared and intruded his dream of nothingness and hospital life. One such intrusion of the outside was the occasional visit from Alana Bloom. He'd asked her to feed his dogs when she could (he only went home once a day, to shower and change clothes) and sometimes she went to the hospital to talk. She told him to get out, get back to his house, or back to the field, or back to the university. To get back to his life. She asked him to talk to him, share his feelings, let them loose. Because apparently bottling up things wasn't good. But Will didn't want any more people in his head. And there were many things he didn't want Bloom to know. So many dark places and questionable thoughts and actions. He already had someone for that.

He would wait.

Wait until things got back to normal.

Wait until Hannibal woke up again.

It had all started on a rainy Tuesday, a couple of months back. Will had gone to Dr. Lecter's consult, distressed by images in his head, feeling the urgent need to hear the man's soothing voice. Hannibal had been paler than usual but Will hadn't thought much of it, focused on his own troubles. He had talked and the doctor had listened and offered his advice, his interpretation of things. Business as usual.

In one of the moments, the doctor had closed his eyes in pain, and sought support in the table behind him, swaying a bit. Will asked if he was all right and Hannibal admitted to feeling slightly unwell but convinced the patient it was nothing to worry about. So they kept talking. The session continued normally.

But just after saying goodbye - after Will had turned to go home, he heard a noise behind him, like something falling heavily on the ground. He turned around and saw the psychiatrist on the floor, unconscious. (Of course, Will thought some time later, trust Hannibal to postpone collapsing unconscious until he'd finished with his patient.) The damned man was even elegant for that. Will ran to his friend and approached him, asked him to wake up. Nothing happened. He asked for help, loudly, but no one seemed to be in the building at that hour. It was dark, too dark.

So Will did what he had to, and with shaky hands pulled out his cell phone to call an ambulance. Maybe there was hope yet and he was overreacting and before help arrived Hannibal would wake up and apologize for the disturbance. That would be great. Because Will really didn't want to deal with all the medical personnel by himself. He didn't want any of that to be happening, so out of the blue. Hannibal was supposed to be his anchor. The part that helped fix his broken mind – he couldn't be broken, too, or everything would collapse.

It was not fair. Hannibal was many things, he was shady and a bit manipulative maybe, but he was there. He listened.

Now he didn't even have that.

The rest of things kept happening but now Hannibal was not there to listen to him. There was only a shadow of the man he once knew.

When the medics came the doctor was still unconscious, limp, eyes closed. It was unsettling. Will rode with him in the back of the ambulance, while machines were attached to the body of his friend and he was asked a lot of questions. If the doctor was allergic to something. If he had fainting episodes before. If he was taking any medication. Will simply had no idea. He felt useless and wanted to get out. It was very loud and colorful and people were speaking and moving and he was worried. It felt so unreal.

Hannibal was the composed one of the two of them, the strong one, the column. This things did not happen to him. He was the scary protector of lost souls – not someone this vulnerable. But there he was, unconscious, bordering a coma-state (apparently) and the doctors had no idea of what was wrong with him. He had a fever and trouble to breathe – that was fixed with antipyretic meds and a nasal cannula, but he never woke up. Even if they treated the symptoms they couldn't figure out the cause. He seemed to be ill for no reason.

The doctor's hair fell on his sweaty forehead, and the skin was too pale. It felt wrong.

And the days went by.

Will's nightmares changed since he was there. Sometimes Hannibal was dead and he was smiling at his body, feeling free of that burden (those made him feel so so guilty). Sometimes he saw himself poisoning the doctor's wine so Lecter would stop playing with his mind. But there had been no poison. That can't be, Will repeated himself, that can't be. Sometimes it was the other way round and Hannibal came at him with a great knife and a smile full of teeth. And he was scared. But then he would woke up and see the man on his hospital bed, still.

People brought flowers. They brought fine chocolates and cards, plenty of cards. From patients and from colleagues and from people Will imagined to be friends or relatives or acquaintances with "wishing you a speedy recovery" sort of messages. Sometimes when he was bored Will read them all. They'd become like close friends. They were certainly easier to handle than people and didn't answer him or look funny at him. nothing happened.

Will knew eventually he would have to go back to something that resembled life. That this was a ridiculous overreaction to someone he knew getting ill. People got sick and died every day and the world didn't stop. His world, on the contrary, had been paused for too long. But he couldn't go back there, face everything and everyone. His fragile mind. The rest of the people. FBIs, students, cashiers, waiters. He couldn't face them. Not anymore.

So he waited.

He became a silent presence next to Hannibal's bed, waiting, reading cards, looking out of the window.

Waiting to have every piece of his life back.

Waiting for those eyes to open and for his nightmare, the one he was having in those unending waking hours, to finally end.

A/N: It's strange, out of character and would never happen. I know. But there's troubled Will and there's sentiment. That's gotta count for something, right?

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