Disclaimer: Based more on Red Dragon than Hannibal.
Will Graham had always assumed that all of the questions directed to him about Hannibal Lecter would stop after the man's arrest in 1975, but the press was an aggravated swarm of mosquitoes set on nothing less than his blood. He couldn't get through the week without a journalist wanting to know what the psychiatrist's favorite color had been, or what he would call the 'relationship' they had had when Lecter had attacked him.
Eventually he grew tired of it all and moved out to Florida. He worked on boats and he collected dogs, up until he got married and had a son. It was a cozy life, he liked to think.
He had found himself sleeping better after he had moved away from it all, but some nights he would still be plagued with nightmares bad enough to wake him drowning in his own sweat and gasping for air. On those nights, he would slip out of bed with an apology to his wife who somehow managed to sleep through most of his fits and make his way outside to the pack of stray dogs he had found himself collecting over the years.
Molly joked that they were more like his army, and he found it appropriate. A stray leading an army of strays.
He would sit out by the boats and his 'army' would sit with him, and on those nights, rare as they came, he would think about Hannibal Lecter. The scar tracing from his hip to the opposite rib would burn like fire, would burn just like it had when he had first been cut, but he wouldn't make a sound. No, even now, knowing the cannibal was hours away behind many sets of concrete walls and would have no possible way of knowing if he did, he would never give that man the pleasure.
"Do you consider Dr. Lecter a man at all?" he remembered a reporter having asked him once, a follow up to the inquiries on whether or not he had plans to track down his attacker and bring peace to all those he had killed.
Will was fairly certain that he had laughed at the question. Millions of answers had crossed his mind since then about the question, the one he had never brought himself to answer, but now in the peace of his own home, he thought he had found one.
Before, he would've said no in a heart beat. Hannibal Lecter was a spider, a snake, a monster as many had deemed him; but now, none of those phrases could even come close to what he considered the psychiatrist.
This man had taken Will's inner being and destroyed it, bending and contorting it to suit his own needs, erasing everything that he considered himself and rewriting him page-by-page. He had rewired his thoughts, rewired his nerves, rewired everything and anything that ever was Will Graham and made him into what he needed. He was manipulative and he always knew just what to say to win over the crowds, right up until the end. He had been Lucifer in the garden of Eden, whispering sweet nothings to Eve until she cast humanity to its downfall; and like Eve, he had tried to tempt Will with the same promises, but led only to his own downfall.
And what is a fallen angel if not man himself? Stripped of his godliness, rid of any ties he may have had to anything greater, wings traded in for an expensive suit, Hannibal Lecter was the finest example of man, and he would tell that to any reporter were he to be asked now.
Will Graham knew that any reporter he called up would give his or her left lung to ask the question, but with it came other questions that he was by no means ready to answer. He needed time to think over the questions and come up with answers that did everyone justice, and having to tell it to a microphone or a camera didn't help him in the slightest. No reporter seemed keen on waiting hours for a reaction though, so he never bothered.
He never honestly thought he'd get the chance to properly voice his experiences until a few weeks ago when he had gotten a letter from someone that had tracked him down.
They were a young woman from the handwriting and language used, and she explained in her first paragraph that she respected his need for privacy and promised to accept defeat if her letter went unanswered. She had taken interest in reading about what had happened and found that the reports had done it no justice.
"There were holes in the police's story," she had explained, that part written almost nervously. "Everyone described Dr. Lecter as a monster, but you never did. You saw him for therapy for a long while from what I can tell and you never pressed chargers for the attack, even though it was well presumed that you would've died from it if the doctors hadn't hurried."
Will had still been tempted to throw the letter out in all honesty, nearing the trash can as he finished, when he found himself rereading the last sentence several times over.
"The other reporters all only seemed interested in the man who attacked you, but I want to know about Hannibal Lecter."
She had signed her name and left a copy of her address and a phone number in case he had wanted to contact her, and he now had the letter in his hand, sitting out by his boats.
He had pondered how to answer this every day during the past few weeks, letting it pull him under every night and wake him back up in the middle of it with the memory of the Wendigo and the scar carving him open. When Willy had confronted him about it, not liking how dark daddy's eyes had gotten, he decided it was time to write her back.
He addressed the sheet of notebook paper to the reporter, as he had done on every other failed attempt at this, but he went at it with the same effort he had put into every one before it.
Truth be told, I don't know a lot about Hannibal Lecter. I don't think there's anyone out there who does, including himself. As a psychiatrist, he kept everything to himself and just focused on his patients, making it hard to try and put more to him than a name.
I do think though, that I had an advantage that his other patients didn't: he considered himself my friend.
We focused on me during our sessions as I slowly unraveled, but even over these years, I can't bring myself to forget the little things he had mentioned to me because they were all I ever had to tie to his name besides the ugly scar he left.
He had a sister once- Mischa. He raised her, and then he lost her. I don't know if she was really a sister, or if she even existed, but I saw a picture he had drawn that he had introduced to me as her. She was a young girl, barely four if I could even say that, and she resembled him in the faintest.
I could tell he had loved her from the way he had been afraid to smudge the lines of her face, and it was the most genuine feeling I had ever come to see from him. I think it would be safe to say that she's dead, and has been for a long time.
He loved the world after it had rained. I was invited more than once to walk with him after a rainstorm, but I always found myself declining. He told me that his favorite part was when the rain dried from the world and it was as if the rain storm had never happened, as if time had simply taken itself back.
Dr. Lecter mentioned this to me a few times in absence, to the point that I truly believe that he thinks one day time will simply take itself back and the world will unravel just as he unraveled me. His blade will seal my scar shut. His victims will be uneaten and will live again, if only for a moment before they're unraveled back to molecules, and then unraveled from that. His sister will live again, provided she lived at all in the first place.
I don't know what he thinks will happen after that. One day, time to him may bounce back and he'll get to do it all over again, whether he repeats himself or doesn't. The world may fade into oblivion. Maybe time will halt where he wants it and he'll be allowed to start over. Those are questions to ask him, but I wouldn't be too hopeful about getting answers from him.
That's how he copes, if I had to pick a cause. As I said before though, the only person who may know Hannibal Lecter is Hannibal Lecter himself. If you manage to secure a visit, ask him about the rain. Ask him about the Mischa in his drawings, about time, about unraveling, but above all else, ask him about the rain.
At the bottom, he signed his name, reading over his reply a few times before deciding it was what he needed it to be. The next morning, he drove to town and mailed the letter to the young Clarice Starling.
-F.J. III