Before you read: William has not been incarcerated in this piece of work and he has no idea what Hannibal is or what he's planning. As far as Will is concerned, Hannibal is his simply psychologist and his friend.

Note: Little details from Thomas Harris's beautiful books are mentioned here and there (for example, Hannibal's first kill), but it is in no way a requirement to read the story before you. If you have any questions or comments on the validity of these parallels, feel free to private message me.

It's hard to be your own person

when you can't get out of your own head."

-Gideon

Waking Nightmares

The time was 3:42 in the morning. Will sat on the side of his bed, sweat pooling down the side of his face. He had been dreaming again, something that he assumed would be the death of him. It had been about the stag again, with the raven hair and knowing eyes. It was able see him, see past him, see through him; it knew everything about him; what he felt, what he'd done.

In this particular dream, the stag had charged him, its horns piercing his body through. He had felt its bone antlers pierce through both of his lungs, his blood pooling up and out of his mouth. As his vision had begun to blur, the muscles in his neck giving out and his head lolling to the side, he had seen Hannibal Lecter with his arm wrapped protectively around the shoulder of Abigail Hobbs; both with small, happy smiles on their faces.

Abigail's voice rang clear, as if she were talking in his ear.

"Dad."

As he awoke from the nightmare, her voice continued to echo in his head.

Had Hobbs been nearby? Or had she been talking to him?

Or, he thought uncomfortably to himself, had he been Hobbs in the dream?

He shook his head, attempting to clear his thoughts. He wouldn't think of such things. Not tonight.

~x~

Hannibal kept the driver's side window down as he sped past the peeling sign of the Patapsco Valley State Park while on his way back to Baltimore, Maryland. He could still feel the blood of his latest kill running down his face, even though he had long since rinsed it off in the river that had witnessed the bloodshed.

It was a shame, he thought, to waste such delectable seasoning – but it had to be done; he couldn't very well stain the seats of his car.

He thought back to the cause of this particular trip.

William Graham.

The man was something of a toy to Hannibal, yet somehow more than that. Hannibal didn't have a word for what Will was. More than a toy or a doll but nothing like a child – Abigail had taken that title after Will had, unfortunately, attached himself to her.

Hannibal had needed to take his mind off of that man; thus a nice hunting trip.

Tonight's kill had, unluckily, been awarded the brunt of Hannibal's frustration. It hadn't been a grocery stop to refill his refrigerator, nor had it been another attack by the Chesapeake Ripper for no one was going to find a mutilated corpse.

No, it had been purely a night for him to clear his mind; something he hadn't had the opportunity to do in a couple of years.

A "just for fun" kill.

He could feel the business card of one Lauren S. Winder in his pocket, the corner sticking into his thigh. Ms. Winder had been an acquaintance he had made back in the nineties while on his way to an APA conference in Nevada. She had been a particularly rude woman who had t-boned his car before reluctantly giving him her business card, though he had not done the same in return.

A call to the police was never made and the accident case had ever been produced. No, he had filed her away for a special night – a special night like this. It was only recently that he had discovered she had moved a few towns over from his residents.

She had been the perfect target.

Within two weeks time the fifty five year old woman would be declared missing but, with no body to prove her death and with no family or spouse to fund a search party, she would soon fall off of the radar as a cold case.

A new member among the vast isles of the forgotten.

Forgotten because Hannibal Lecter willed it so.

~x~

Will stood behind the chair he would normally sit in during his therapy appointment – if what they were doing could be called therapy. Hannibal sat in his usual position across from his patient, his eyes on Will's – though Will refused to look directly at the other man, instead memorizing the hard line of his jaw.

"You say Abigail and I were in the dream as well?"

"Yes."

"And why tell me of that part of the dream?"

Will's eyes glanced to Hannibal's then back to his jaw. "Because it was part of the dream."

"Yet you seem the most disturbed by it."

Will hesitated, his eyes moving about. "It was Abigail. She…" he trailed off, mind repeating the scenario in his head over and over; as if he had missed some important detail; as if he could go back and change that little moment, "…she said the word 'dad'."

"And why is that troubling to you?"

"Because I don't know if she was talking to me or if she was talking to Hobbs. Because–" he cut off, his fingers white from grasping the back of the chair so harshly. Hannibal could smell the fear on him – the unwillingness yet the necessity to talk about it.

"Because I might…I might have been Hobbs."

Hannibal sat for a moment, waiting to see if Will would speak again. When he did not, Hannibal rose from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back. They had had this conversation before and Hannibal had attempted a number of different methods to approach it with.

He had early on discovered it would do him no good to make Will believe he was anything like Hobbs; all that would do was put him in a closed state of mind that was impossible to work with and to manipulate. Hannibal's goals for Will had been started with the death of Garret Jacob Hobbs, yet they were wildly interrupted with him as well. Hannibal would have much preferred to be in control of the setting for Will's first kill; something that wouldn't have forced his hand the moment he saw his victim; something that would have let him play.

It was nothing like Hannibal's first kill.

The butcher by pond. Hannibal had savored in that kill, with the small, taunting slices, even though it had ended in mere minutes.

Nevertheless, times had changed since he had first felt the thrill of cutting into a man's fat flesh; it just wasn't a simple task anymore.

Yet it was still an enjoyable one.

"You are nothing like Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Will. You are not a killer."

"You don't know what I do in my free time," Will joked desperately, trying to diverge the topic away from his dream, from his life. Will always tried to joke his way out of the situation at the beginning of their conversations, with dark little stabs of humor that was not lost on Hannibal.

"You are not a killer, Will. The sooner you believe that, the sooner your dreams will dissipate."

Will's eyes met Hannibal's for another brief second before turning is head to stare at the beautiful wooden desk that took up a surprisingly small portion of the room. "How could I possibly change the way I see myself when I see the truth that I believe?"

"Why don't you start by believing me?"

"I…I do believe–"

"You are pretending to believe me, Will, to delude yourself of what you really are."

When Will didn't respond, Hannibal moved to stand in front of Will's chair. "Often times it is easier to believe a lie than it is to believe the truth, especially when it is about yourself. In your particular case, your mind has put up a defense against this lie by attempting to scare you with it in forms such as your dreams and the stag that you keep seeing."

Will was once again staring at Hannibal's jaw.

"What if it isn't a lie, Doctor Lecter? What if the truth is staring me dead in the eye?" Another glance to and away from Hannibal's eyes. "What if I enjoy killing? What if my mind is trying to tell – trying to scream – the truth?

"Because I'll tell you, Doctor, that pulling the trigger seemed to change something in me," Will's breathing had picked up in the slightest, his heart rate accelerated. "Something snapped. It's like, deep down, I'm not truly afraid of killing another human being." Hannibal could smell the confusion and the sickness rolling off of him in waves.

When Will spoke like this, he wasn't afraid to meet Hannibal's eyes.

That was something that had caught Hannibal's attention about Will after knowing him for a short time. When he began to talk about killing people – killing Hobbs – he wasn't afraid to meet Hannibal's stare and hold it. In fact, Will seemed to relish in the eye contact, as if he was bonding through just that simple act.

"It was almost like I had fully come into myself. Fully accepted the truth."

"It is only up to you to accept the truth, Will."

Will's heart rate slowly began to descend and Will's eyes had shifted to looking back at Hannibal's jaw. "How am I supposed to do that, Doctor?"

"By, as I said before, believing me."

Will showed the slightest smile. The darkest part of the conversation was over and Will could begin to relax; his muscles began to loosen and his fingers released their death grip from back of the chair.

Will always showed Hannibal both sides of himself during these conversations – and Hannibal had taken a preference to one of them.

There was the charming personality that ran on his surface; the one that he deluded to the outside world and to his own person – the one that liked dark stabs of humor and had difficulty with eye contact. The one that believed the action of killing a fellow human being was one of the ugliest things in the world.

But moreover, he preferred the personality that festered below; the one that he showed to Doctor Lecter and Doctor Lecter alone.

The one that caused Will to feel such a protective need to shield Abigail Hobbs from any damage that the world could cause her – or that she could cause the world – because she was so close to what that personality was – what it wanted to be.

The personality that knew deep down what he was meant to be doing; not looking at the beauty of other artists, but creating his own pieces of artwork – pieces that, Hannibal was certain, would have such an individual uniqueness to them that copycats would hesitate to duplicate.

The first portion of Hannibal Lecter's design would soon come to a close: the complete destruction and annihilation of the sanity of William Graham. A couple more pushes in the right direction and Will would fall into a state of utter chaos.

This was when Hannibal would be there for him with a willing hand to pull him up and out of the confusion and the pain that he was feeling. He would use a guiding and tender hand to lead Will down the same path that Hannibal had chosen for himself.

He was more than confident that Will would see the conclusions that was already beginning to dawn on him before the collapse of his sanity. It was as if his psyche was preparing for the fall.

"That's quite a line, Doctor Lecter; do you use it on all of your patients?"

Hannibal smiled in return. "Only on the one's that I like."

Please review with questions/comments/concerns about the character(s). Constructive criticism is overly appreciated, seeing as this is going to be a considerably longer fic and I want my readers to be happy with it. This is a "Pilot," if you will. If you like it, fav/follow/comment, and I will be happy to continue.

Hannigram is later to come.

If it is not already implied, this is going to be a dark fic. I suggest this be the only chapter you read if you're not mentally prepared for heartbreak.