A wind is blowing! The green lights
Sing extinguished - large and satiated
The moon fulfils the high hall,
Where no more celebrations sound through.
The ancestral portraits quietly smile
And far-off - their last shadow fell,
The room is sultry with putrefaction,
Arround which ravens mutely move in circles.
A lost sense of past times
Looks from the stony masks,
Pain distorted and empty of existence
Mourning in abandonments.
Sick smells of sunken gardens
Quietly caress the decay -
Like the echo of sobbing words
Quivering over open crypts.
~ Georg Trakl, Decay
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy
Light and shadow in the mist of solid presence. Blinking, twitching, crackle, pinch. A burning smell in his nose.
The world in motion. The world frozen. The world splintered?
No.
Will is the one who splinters. Who breaks. And falls. And falls. And ...
His fingers sweat and have the temperature of giant glaciers while they clutch the steering wheel like a vice. His feet find neither brake nor gas pedal.
Where am I?
When skies are gray
He winks. The breath knocks back on him, there, in the backbone of his throat. It feels sore, as if he had shouted. Roared from the ground of his trembling chest like a grenade that accidentally ignited in a secret hideout.
Has he? Did he scream? In panic? Out of fear? With rage?
Will does not remember.
A shade of coal and mud cold blood draws his palate. Furry coats his teeth and feels like hedgehog bristles when he fumbles with the tip of his tongue over it. It all tastes like rotting stone and brass and he thinks of death. He too often thinks about death to be honest.
Johnny Cash sings his song, bangs it, babbles it as in mockery, accusing the flag of alcohol. He sounds cheerful, but also so sad sad sad. It constricts Will's chest, strangles his lung, wriggles out the air like a salmon swarm in spring.
What happens here?
His environment is expressed as a cotton ball dipped in chloroform, dull and bitter sharp. Sounds jump out of the abstinent dark like bat wings. Screeching tires. Pig squealing. The fire iris of two headlamps, throwing themselves at him and scratch the paint of his car.
Everything blurres, corners and edges are sanded down and run down on his retina like butanoic acid. It etches, but he does not dare to close his eyelids. A space-devouring painting with tangled lines of oil and ink envelopes him, surrounds him with arms of dust and shadows and they press, press on him. He's never been a great connoisseur and he finds no purity in this morbid mess. He hates it. Nausea kicks over him like an unhappy built tarpaulin and he gets tangled up in it, gasping for oxygen that seems to be replaced by a spongy filter sea of uncertainty. It stares at him from stupid, frameless eyes. So incredibly stupid that he feels the need to lash out at something. Or at someone. Wishing to be not upset anymore. To be never raged again ...
Are these my thoughts? My aggression? Or does it belong to someone else ...
Are you a thief, Mr. Graham? Are you a pathetic, puny robber? Do you steal identities?
How can you punish someone for something, what is the penalty in person? How can you lock up someone whose cage is his brain? His own prisoner?
A fine echo skin covers his flesh like lilac flowers branching through thin veins. He feels, sees, smells, hears, tastes, spits and indebted blames anything but himself.
You'll never know, dear
How much I loved you
Will I die? Or am I dead already?
Will anyone miss me?
'Please don't take my sunshine away'
No reply. A moan goes through the slithering car when he turns over the first time. Will hears it as from afar. Hollow and tinny. A perfect pirouette in ballet. The performance of the dying swan in the mechanical industry. Different output, same tragedy. The blood is the same too, the color red and fresh. No copy, no nakedness. All original. Will listens to the viscous drops that swell from his cut below his left cheekbone, pushing hot on his chin. It smells of graveyard dirt. He does not know when exactly he has gained this injury. He currently knows very little at all.
The car turns a second time. Will rotates with it.
The strap of his seat hooks like cast iron in his shoulder.
'Please don't take my sunshine away'
Turn it off. Switch the damn radio off!
He wants to grab the radio while he's still in flight, presence of mind palpating the button, but the weightlessness doesn't grant him relief. There is an undertow and he's stuck on it, helpless and fragile. Powerless.
The car rotates a third time. There is a bang, a final cry. The grinding squeal is bump-ligand metal. In his imagination he arranges his rib fragments like dominos.
Then the car is standing still. It leans on the left side of a grass hill and fluctuates like a ship wreck that has run against a sharp jagged reef that slashed the shiny boat belly. Will remains, trapped in steel, glass and fabric. It is a miracle he hasn't broken any of his bones. Fault lines adorn the transparent surface, but no shards have freed and hurt him. Will's pulse plays Spanish harpsichord. Interracial and desolate. His harsh breath clacks like castanets to the beat of his heart.
His body is numb, but intact, the injected adrenaline doesn't allow him pain. He trembles without realizing it.
He is defying terribly miserable.
He thinks of a mother he never knew. Only from the stories of his father.
"You have her eyes, buddy. Her eyes ... you resemble her so much."
Even in his memory the words taste of gin and a broken heart.
Please don't take
My sunshine
Awa -
And finally, FINALLY, the radio is silent though it still chokes out a humming from the racked boxes.
Will can not be pleased.
A jolt surprises him and grabs him with imaginary hands on his curled hair, throwing him forward with delicious brutality. His nose hits the steering wheel. A cracking, as if a bee breaks its leg. Blood shoots out, paints his lips, his chin and the collar of his jacket.
He feels nothing still. Only that a warm and wet liquid clings to his neck. Somehow comforting.
For the first time in his life, he wonders if there is a heaven. That there may be a hell, he already knows. He hopes it since the age of ten when he felt that his neighbor had his wife pushed down the stairs.
He loved to hear her whimper. Loved it so much…
He raises the moaning droning skull when he hears a noise in front of him. An uneaten crunch as if someone chewed on bones.
He sees a figure in the fog. Tall, slim, dark. Antlers growing from its temples. It stares at him, red, pupil-less eyes.
A gargoyle? A fury? An angel? Will has forgotten the difference. Has shaken it from the pulpy mass of his brain, like much else. Important components, gears, screws, nuts, swivel cords. He falls apart like a carelessly stacked dish tower.
He sees the being move closer to himself. Supple, predatory. Its hands are made of sharpened knife claws, its feet are hooves, reminiscent of that of a deer. It is as black as a moonless night and it is naked. Will takes a rattling breath.
Will it come to get him? Attracted by the noise and the smell of salty sweat and easy prey? Does it want to collect him and pull a few chunks of meat out of his body, tumbling noisily on the floor? Will it eat him up alive or mercifully cut his throat with a bite before it begins his meal?
Has the Grim Reaper sent his friend, the Boogeyman today to take care of his whereabouts?
Will doesn't know. Even if, he is not able to escape. How could he? He can hardly move. Not even a straightening is allowed and he can't open the car door for the rest of the left side entombed in pounded earth.
The being is only five feet away from him. Then four. Then three. Two. One ...
It stops in front of him, goes into a crouch. Their eyes meet, melt into each other. On Will's arms tingles fear. The being is a monster. It's evil, though he particularly intends to blur the boundaries of such termina, heroes and villains. This is one aspect of his gift. His curse. It smolders in his blood.
He observes with horror as every fiber of his body tenses, when a clawed fist clenches and flies down in his direction.
He closes his eyes and expects the end.
His last thought belongs to a man whose name he has forgotten and doesn't know why.
And a final question.
Will he weep for me? I've never seen him weep bef-
Then the raw crash of a shattering windshield dominates his senses and he is blinded by a loud, bloody and humid darkness.
As the paramedics carry him out of the crushed car, he has lost consciousness long since. They transport him on a stretcher, limp and flatly breathing and cheesy white. He does not wake up. For a few hours he does not need to.
And when he wakes up, he'll soon wish not to have awoken at all.
His echo skin screams.
Will awoke by the sonorous fibrillation of cheap tube lights. Wearily, he blinked through his eyelids, still sticky from bleached tears. The world of the living opened their doors to him in the form of a clinically white paneled shrine. Featureless his eyes looked at a flat, bare ceiling above his head. The lamp, which light had penetrated his senses, shines angrily in his corona. Quickly he looks somewhere else.
Where am I?
His gaze wandered insidiously, saw empty walls and a leather couch with cream-colored fabric. He met a window that made him think of a cartoon from wooden poles and twine, he had saw in a morning newspaper with declining interest.
Which morning was it? What's the date?
... What's the date today?
His ears opened. He perceived busy steps from an opposite corridor, hissing and pickling of foreign voices. The rhythmic beeping of electrical equipment. The choppy roles of smaller wheels, as a cart with colorful medicine jars and a plastic plate covering hot steaming meals was pushed on the course. Will caught a fleeting blink of a young woman in a pearl pink smock dress that billowed gently around her hips and waist.
A little reassured, Will slumped deeper into the pillow and breathed in deep and long.
So he was not alone. All right. This meant here were people who would enlighten him about everything when he asked nicely. Among other things, why he was stuck in this bed and why his body ached as a bull would have taken him up on the horns, and why he was partly bandaged like a pharaoh's mummy. And at last who this man wasthat sat a few inches away from him on a chair, a magazine about naturopathy in his lap and apparently dozed off ...
And behind his back leaned, seemingly bored, the pitch-black deer figure that Will had crowned as his greedy drooling killer shortly before his exhaustion took him over.
Will's heart put up such a rapid rate that he almost thought he heard the Klong that was caused by the collision against his breathless ribs. Any sudden movement caused a storm of hail ants from their caves, they bit into his nerves and nibbled at them with bitterly evil desire. His heart was beating frantically at the back of his throat now.
Not you. Everything, everyone, but not you!
Fanning its withered breath of life against narrowly opened, dusty dry lips, the deer monster watched him, almost sweetly embedding a dangerous paw on the shoulder of the stranger, whose head was tilted slightly to the side in sleep. Dense, ash-blond strands of his hair splayed over his forehead.
Like the turned out embryonic membrane of a twin soul ... with claws.
Will had never seen this man in his life and wondered what he was doing here. Keep guard about him? This thought was strange to the profiler, ridiculous, but not invariably absurd. He had obviously been injured, interpreting his wounded, plastered appearance and the plug in his forearm resulting resulted in a plastic bag with liquid and apparently diverted into his blood directly. Although he was not sure what, or perhaps better who had bequeathed him this condition, Jack would make sure that he'd be safe now, ready to rest and gain new strength so he could roam at crime scenes again and spit out new information. Like a tin soldier, settled on the flat wooden banquet, amazed by how many steps he could take, he, the skinny doll the skinny doll. Walking so long until he tipped over and played dead man.
He looked at the stranger from a seemingly safe distance. And now, as his mind finally girded in a tense calmness, he was able to realize that the man offered an impressively inhuman facade. Inhuman in the sense of - not from this world.
As a precaution, he forced himself to study the stranger's appearance in detail.
The man was tall and broad-shouldered. The profile was significantly cut, impregnating a touch of majesty but also wilderness, the flesh held a walnut wood color, the skin of his cheeks was carved with precarious cheekbones. The head shape almost square, coarse and flowing, rough and gentle in one (Will knew no right expression to describe how he actually felt - he could not decide and rather chose everything). He wore a suit made of woven kerosene wool. A crow perched black tie tied around his neck, entwined with a crisp white collar. The long legs ended in dark leather shoes.
Will thought of Rome and the statues of carved stone that still stood there in the temples populated by gawking tourists. Their majesty had never aged despite the crumbling tooth of time. Hallowed likenesses of gods and heroes from legends and mythological tales.
A sculpture.
Yes, the face of the stranger resembled a sculpture's. According to the body, he let his mind wander vaguely. The fabric veiled the most and maybe that was a good/bad thing.
Will took a rattling breathing. At that moment, his opponent opened his eyes and looked at him directly.
The sudden contact caught him like a thunderbolt. Calm burgundy brown looked at him, linked with his point of view, it came to pass, and held it firmly. Will believed feel choking fingertips at his throat felt, but it did not make him turn away. The vortex into which he fell was pure fire and he burned. He was captured, crucified. Cursed.
They were silent. The duration was unlimited, lacked any measure.
The stranger bowed his head in greeting, barely a nod, barely a movement. Interrogative? Nervous? Even shy?
He smiled.
It was as if the evening sun rose over the snow-tipped Alp tops.
But the deer monster smiled too, and its dreary, obscene mouth pierced with a round circulated thicket of pale, blood bathed fangs. His blood.
At that moment, something broke in Wills heart, perhaps forever. And he did not know why. He did not ... he just felt an intense, heady wave, a pain of loss that rolled like the pebbles under his skin and it elicited a whimper. A puppy that was pulled away too rapidly from the milk dripping teat of its mother and rebelled kicking and whining.
Will felt suddenly rarely empty. Hollowed. As they had removed him an organ. Or more. Or ripping the acid mantle of his salty skin.
Who the hell is that !?
"Will?"
A baritone, like chimney warm velvet beneath his fingertips, washed with a dark, melodic accent over him like a clarifying flood, tore him from his pain, his thoughts, even from the murder being. For a few benevolent seconds.
He knows my name.
Why is the sound of his voice so familiar to me...? I hear it for the first time.
It is beautiful ... (?)
But how could he recognize this voice while the speaker was unknown to him?
The man, however, spoke more calmly.
"You woke up. Wonderful. How do you feel?" He sounded relieved, encased by boundless sympathy.
Will was silent. He wanted to look at the man again, only look at him, but his eyes remained mesmerized of following the monster how it moved its hand from the vital shoulder and instead led to its own face thar looked more like an anonymous Phantom of the Opera. It bent his bony index finger, pushed it to the thin marble lips, incorporated in gloomy shadows.
Psstthe gesture said and Will's heartbeat quickened. Psst. You have to be quiet now.
Will said nothing. He was paralyzed. His blood poured in winter cool streams through its rigid cores.
The essence nodded vaguely, but benevolent. Delighted.
Good boy.
Will shook himself. A tremor seized him, making him tremble like a young aspen.
"Will?"
The sudden urgency bathed in his name forced him to be confronted with the stranger's attention again. What he met while raising his gaze was the face that would have fit more in the gold masked angle of a pharaoh tomb than in the unfriendly lit premises of modern medicine.
"Is everything all right? Do you have migraines? Are you in pain? Shall I set the morphine higher?"
Will was very surprised that the stranger brought such care in his questions. Warmth. Exuberant yet real. He did not know him ... right? The profiler thought feverishly.
...
-No.
He had never met him before, not outside this room. Never.
There was no connection.
"Why are you here, Mister?" His voice sounded mechanical. He saved the greeting phrases.
The stranger paused, if only by a hair. He held both face as well as body under iron control.
"Mister?" He raised a delicate eyebrow. "But Will, we've already stored this form of address -..." The baritone wove itself in barely ensnared irritation, feeling as welcome as the acidic sweat bead that climbed down Will's neck.
"I think I would remember that." he snorted indignantly, trying to support and raise himself up on his forearms. A cacaphony of stitches exploded under his flesh as the watering smoky firecrackers of a Chinese fireworks festival. Will gasped for breath in horror, but it seemed as if someone had squeezed every ounce of oxygen from the ambient. His eyes threatened to roll back into his head and his breath grew heavier. The pain was overwhelming, let stars burst in his brain and dance on stage like ceramic dolls.
In less than two seconds he felt a strong, almost unbearably hot hand close around his own wrist. The long fingers pressed like lava in his flesh. At the same time the cold breath of a second existence stroke his lower leg, hidden under the blanket.
He responded quickly. Proposed the uninvited hand away as if it was poison or a snapping bear trap.
"Don't touch me!" he hissed and would he have been an animal, he would have spewed out a warning growl. "Go. Whoever you are, a renegade reporter, one of Lounds' sycophants or an FBI guy I don't give a fuck. I don't want to speak with anyone except my fiance."
The dark Iris sharpened due to the crude rejection. Almost shocked. Or was it even a terrible knowledge that seeped in like water?
"Will, I am –"
"If you really want to help me, call Frederick." Will stopped him coldly. The agony and the realization that it had to be alleviated by medication, cut his voice more gruff voice than intended. "My fiance, his name is Frederick Chilton. I guess the name should be known by you, if you work under Jack's regime."
The stranger stood there as roots had dug out of his shoe soles and rammed deep and strong into the ground. A ship with no wind in the sails. Will felt dismay that shimmered like an own, untamed aura around his opponent, but he could not place, why it clung to him so badly. If he was honest with himself, he also didn't care too much at that moment.
He was in pain, the inner life of his skull thundered and his mind was plagued with a form of disorientation he had never met before in such pure, pureessence. It was strange, insulting, as one waded through clouds of sugar with the unerring knowledge that a throw of King cobras lurked under the shiny powder, capable to dive out of the snow coloured sand and to wedge their finger thick fangs into his leg at any time, until he went to his knees and they attacked him from all sides.
The stranger stirred again. He did a step toward him.
"Will, calm down. It's all right, you're exhausted and-"
The deer beast cut fabric scars in the blanket, pulling hard at his hip. His skeletal chest heaved frantically as if it were laughing. Taunting him. His carbon black hooves left arches on the ground. It was still two steps away from him.
"Get out." instructed Will between convulsively clenched jaw halves. Naked panic welled from his bright dilated iris. "Get out of here!"
He thought he heard something crack miserably in his throat, then he tasted bitter sharp metal in his mouth and coughed. The gray shirt he wore sprinkled with sparkling ruby spots.
A chirping sound, similar to a piercing siren echoed from the walls and three men in color faded clothes rushed around his bed where he writhed.
And he still saw the stranger between the struggling and gesticulating bodies, flashing like a fluctuating torch head in a sea of darkness. His undaunted gaze fixed on him. Reddish and haggard.
Who is that anyway? Who is -
The babble of voices was loud, dull and annoying as buzzing flies.
Then he closed his eyes and drifted off again.
He was very, very tired.
"Explain this to me, Donald."
Hannibal Lecter's face was devoid of any emotional expression. But his voice was sharp and rich like a harpoon. The burning in his deep black pupils reminded Dr. Sutcliffe of the depths of satanic hell as Alighieri had described them in his Divine Comedy. But for some strange reason he was aware the role of the pilgrim Dante had not been transferred to him, but that of Charon, who sailed with the dead sinner souls on his ship and brought them into the more gruesome circles of Inferno. And this man in front of him? He wavered between the portrait of an avenging Lucifer and the judging King Midas. Both statutes seemed not to want to give him any mercy.
"These brain hemorrhage that could be stopped successfully ... " Lecter went on in that awfully quiet tone (Sutcliffe compared it to a path of broken glass, on which he had to wade barefoot and blindfolded). "May I ask if it was located near the hippocampus?"
Sutcliffe swallowed. A small vein on his left temple swelled to shallow throbbing. He had not missed the slightly mocking component, outweighed in Lecter's last sentence. He was terribly reluctant, a similar procedure as the one being a beginner who was responsible for a mistake that made all the organs of a patient inoperable, so they could not even use them for transplantation.
"Yes." he finally pressed out drily and it annoyed him beyond measure to recognize potential in Lecter's derisive glance. His former colleague. The man, who had decided to become a psychratrist after one of his successful operations failed, and yet he still was a whispered legend with an impressive record. Sutcliffe would have given much for harvesting equivalent fame.
"Located right or left?" Lecter went on. Slowly but surely, the psychatrist seemed to like the interrogation.
"You know it makes no difference." Sutcliffe replied lamely instead. Why exactly did he do wrong for having Will Graham on his desk (again)? Why did he have deal with Hannibal Lecter, the man who must think of Will Graham as precious in every possible way, when one looked quickly at the magnificent rings they wore on their left hand? A few drops of sweat glistened on his mustache. He hoped Lecter did not see them.
Of course he saw them, unfortunately.
"I just want to inform myself about every detail I can get." he said politely, but firmly. "Or do I have to consult my lawyer about this?" His European accent broke through, more than usual. Probably the current situation and his increasing anger were responsible for that. That was rare. Sutcliffe had never seen him lose his composure during an operation for once.
The strands of his jaw muscles were clearly visible when he answered.
"Right." he said. It was like standing to the wall and expect the coup de grace.
Lecter looked at him, the jacket neatly folded over one arm in front of the heaving chest, his head slightly lowered, his eyes like polished knife edges. Sutcliffe saw a flourishing bloodlust germinate in these eyes and it made his pulse beat stronger against his veins. Although it was not the first time that disappointed relatives bequeathed him with such a view, something about this man gave him the confidence that he could actually mean it ... and it frightened him. A little bit.
"Dr. Stevens will bring me the CT images again, but it seems that Mr. Graham - Will has suffered damage in the region of his long-term memory." he droned (more hasty than intended).
"What do you intend to do about it?" was all he received to pay for this critical information.
"Well ..." Sutcliffe searched for words, thought, before he said: "We are not able yet to assess how bad his memory loss really is and -"
"He forgot me." Lecter cut him off. "The person with whom he was planning to take the covenant of marriage and to spend the rest of his life nearly seven hours ago. And now I'm a nobody, while an acquaintance of ours has moved to my place like a mongoose that forced in an old snake skin. Is this fact not alarming enough!?"
Sutcliffe nodded. "Of course, this is a strange development, but this is one reason we must be even more careful about it. If I didn't know better, I'd say his memories have colorfully mixed in the accident and restructured with existing standards, particularly those of his short-term memory. So Dr. Chilton has automatically taken your place as his fiance and you... well."
This sentence was followed by an awkward silence. Sutcliffe rubbed his neck.
"Dr. Sutcliffe?"
Fast Addressed had heard aufgeschnaubt relief. Better a distraction in the form of meat and color of a third person, for a unending duel between him and the former Star-surgeon of the station.
When he turned slightly in the direction of the other voice, Hannibal's movements followed him like a reflection of broken mirror shards.
Dr. Chilton stood before them in the passage. A hand draped on the knob of his cane, the other hiding in a pocket of his jacket. He came towards them in modest speed, accompanied by rhythmical knocking. Sutcliffe held out his hand. Chilton took it with a serious expression on his face.
"Dr. Chilton." Sutcliffe greeted the psychiatrist formally, since he did not know what to upscale or dignified level he had to behave in front of this man. "Good thing we were able to reach you so early today. We were already talking about you."
Chilton raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, I didn't drive home if you mean that." he explained rigorously, leaning his weight slightly, causing his figure to shift to the right side. "I kept myself alive with the instant coffee of the hospital until the sun came out. Nasty stuff, but it keeps awake."
"May I ask what is the meaning of his presence here? " asked Hannibal before Sutcliffe was even able to a nod.
Chilton threw him a look that seemed too similar to the one llamas gave before they spit.
"This I'd like to know as well." he said piqued, turned back to Sutcliffe. "Even if I had asked more friendly."
The doctor took a deep breath. His hands clung together, formed a finger roof. He had good reason to call for Chilton. There were matters which could not be postponed, and with this he wanted to finish them early. Even if the products that should result from them would probably not find favor by both parties.
"Will is both physically and mentally stable for now." he said soothingly, whereby he observed a gentle shoulder sink of Chilton. "What he needs now is much more of this stability. An anchor he can hold onto before the next waves wash away him. Too much confusion would poison his mind rather than cure and-"
"Express yourself more clearly." Chilton said. Well, he had an impatient caliber too. Sutcliffe sighed inwardly. Have I accidentally walked under a ladder today or met a black cat without realizing it !?
Your friend – colleague," corrected Sutcliffe, as Lecter looked at him sharply. "He seems to have suffered slight amnesia during the accident. We suspect it is temporarily limited, but we can not say much about its true standards. Not yet." he added to avoid criticism.
Chilton frowned.
"This is really tragic and I'm sorry for Will's memory loss, but what does that have to do with me?"
"Oh, it has explicitly to do with you." repeated the doctor slowly, licked his parched lips. "Will seems to have brought some definite principles into confusion. He believes that you are his fiance and that you'll marry in less than a year."
Silence. The unbelieving knowledge in Chilton's distorted face. Wide-open eyes.
... The blaze in them.
Then.
"WHAT!?"
Chilton looked questioningly to Lecter, who behaved like a statue.
"But what-"
"Dr. Lecter doesn't exist anymore for Will Graham. When Will saw him, he chased him out." Sutcliffe said in a pragmatic voice. "His person is gone, wiped away with a wet sponge from the school board. Will probably transferred all the emotions he associated with him, to you. Was there recently an incident that could have particularly impressed in his memory? One that might have encouraged this influence?"
Chilton thought. Sutcliffe realized that his hand dug deeper into the wood of his cane. Lecter said nothing. His face was similar to a grave. Stony and dead.
After careful deliberation Chilton shook his head.
"No. The last time we spoke was at a reception held at the end of an opera. This has been… several weeks ago."
Sutcliffe sensed a chance.
"Interesting." The doctor folded his arms. "Had there been a dispute? Some sort of confrontation?"
"Not that I knew of."
But the answer came a bit too quickly to be genuine. Meanwhile, Sutcliffe sighed.
"If that's so I can't explain it either. But well, it does not change the fact that his brain pressed the delete button."
"What will you do about it?" Chilton's tone was sour with curiosity. Sutcliffe shrugged.
"Nothing." he revealed, uncomfortably stepped from one foot to the other. "Not yet." he admitted after two breaths. "You were both men of medicine before you changed into psychology. You know that amnesia is always a tricky thing."
"And what should we do? Just leave him in that condition? Pretend as if all was the same?"
"Exactly what I wanted to suggest."
"Perverse." Lecter said coldly, thus latching on the conversation again. Sutcliffe glared at him.
"It's merciful." he disagreed." I offer you a gracious period of twenty weeks. Give him his illusion, carry his belongings and everything else that has a nostalgic value to him to Chilton's dwelling and keep him under close observation. Not a syllable about his intimate connection with Dr. Lecter, and no allusions to past experiences or anything else that might confuse him and throw his nerves into disarray. If he doesn't regain his memory of his own accord, then ..."
He left the sentence unfinished. None of them spoke a word.
No one knew at the end, how long the silence had lasted, as Lecter's voice pierced through the membrane.
"Twelve." he finally summoned. "Twelve and no less. Then he'll be told about everything."
"Oh please, Hannibal." Chilton groaned, rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Are you serious? Three months? Are you scared of cancelling the wedding date?"
"I have not the slightest doubt that Will will recover in the near future."
"Of course you don't." Chilton replied snidely. "But before this miracolous healing begins, you should give me your ring first."
Hannibal stared at him as if his opponent had just asked for one of his kidneys.
"What?" His voice was a coffin nail.
Chilton opened his lips to say something, but closed them again and waved.
"Oh, you know what? Keep it. I will buy one for my own, one that suits my style. It will frame the whole thing as even more realistic."
"More realistic?" echoed Lecter skeptical. "Does that mean you agree with the proposal? Without further ado?"
"Of course. After all, I can't abandon someone who's stuck in such a horrible situation." Chilton wore an indignant expression on display, as he could not believe Lecter actually thought he wouldn't want to accept this 'offer'. "Relax. My intentions are of purely chivalrous nature. After the deadline, I'll bring him washed and brushed in a basket on your doormat. I vow this to you."
"I doubt that."
"Whether you're in doubt or not is irrelevant. Here it's just a matter of what is best for Will Graham. And that may apparently be my humble self."
"Guard your tongue."
"What will you do? Serve it to me with lima beans and cooked rice?"
Lecter's eyes narrowed to quietly seething slits.
"You still remember my little joke." he said without recognizable emotion.
Chilton clucked his tongue.
"Your humor remains in memory. Something I can no longer tell from my poor Will now. I'll remember to tell him the joke, when I take him out to a fine restaurant."
Lecter's mouth fell a bit.
"I guess he'll return as hungry as he entered - my experience prophesies me that he needs more substantial fare than your rabbit food."
"Don't worry, I'll show him the culinary arts of vegetarianism. A pleasure he has hardly expanded with you, I guess."
"I know what his body requires most. I take care of my partner."
"So will I." Chilton countered bluntly, pierced at his watch, as if he was already weary of this conversation. "If you can spare time to write me a list of his allergies, please... I want to be prepared for everything."
Lecter's left eyebrow twitched imperceptibly.
"Food allergies?" he asked, but his voice sounded a little hollow. As he would not believe his own words (he didn't).
"All allergies." Chilton replied promptly, as he had been waiting for this question. "Also, if he tolerates latex or nicht." he added smugly, grinning.
A confused Sutcliffe looked between the two psychopaths / psychologists back and forth, then the penny dropped. A tenth of a second later burning blood rolled into his cheeks with a smacking sound. That grown men deigned to such childish allusions ... well, they were effective anyway. Hannibal's face remained heroically unmoved, but his skin was chalk white.
Before a physical dispute threatened to take action Sutcliffe raised his arms as he would whistle to a close.
"Dr. Chilton, it would be better if you could go to Will immediately now, Room 66." he interfered. "He has expressly requested you and it would be unhealthy for a patient's condition to be ignored by his relatives for too long."
For the first time since their encounter, Chilton smiled at him widely. But his eyes were strangely dull.
"In fact, doctor, I agree with you completely. Will should get what he needs." he purred. He did not even turn around as he spoke to Lecter one last time. "Right, Hannibal? It's his choice after all."
He turned his back at them without goodbye disappeared in the adjoining corridor, overrun by nurses, slipped through the crowd and was gone. For the moment at least.
Lecter and Sutcliffe watched him go, each loaded with different feelings and thoughts. Then Sutcliffe apologized hastily and put forward (as a defense) that there were other patients, he had to take care of. Lecter nodded. As they shook hands in farewell, Sutcliffe involuntarily jerked back from the cold that was waiting in the psychiatrist's fingertips.
Frederick could not believe his luck.
The cane clacked in the pace of his footsteps as he crossed the corridors of the Baltimore State Hospital. The occasionally bumping of some employees did not bother him and also the rarely murmured excuses were wiped with noncommittal silence off the disk of his thoughts. It was in an inevitably radiant mood.
He probably would have even sung I'm walking on sunshine, if the hospital had not sprayed its oppressive atmosphere. The smell of disinfectant and washing soap wafted around his nose and blocked his senses for enjoyable impressions.
The war of words he had just delivered with Hannibal made his calves still a bit soft, but he held himself upright, crackling by sudden rushes of left adrenaline.
He was charged, almost high. And when he got into his stride, he couldn't stop. Words and hidden insults had bubbled over his tongue like champagne or arrows from liquid-shaped wax and they had met their target, each target. He had no regrets.
Previously, he could not have done anything like this. Could not have been so nasty at Hannibal Lecter. Previously.
But now someone had turned the tables. Whether God himself or Dolarhyde, he did not care. However, he would probably send an expensive bouquet of flowers to him and wish him a fast recovery. Two hours before he had cursed this man and said he would deserve a prison stay in one of the cells in Guantanamo Bay. Now it seemed he couldn't pay him high enough for this misfortune. The proven service of it was tremendous. Almost inhuman.
He had constantly speculated how he should secede Will Graham from Hannibal Lecter's influence. He had thought of thousands of variants, discaring numerous of them after careful consideration.
Nevertheless, he wanted this profiler with the outstanding empathy. He longed to acquire the right of ownership, being able to identify him as a exclusive, personal patient and he sought the sole credit for the results that he could tease out of the extraordinaire psyche of this man, pulling them to the surface.
That Will's damaged memory chose him as fiance, leaving Hannibal as nobody, was not that important. No, it merely resembled the coreless Amarena cherry on the powdered cream pie roof of his world.
He stopped. The room door Will Graham rested behind, reminded him of the flat compressed template of an ash-gray castle. Number 66 winked at him, blinking, as if to encourage him in taking action.
The devil's in the details. he thought, and his lips curled into a slight smile.
Then he gripped the knob, turned it in a bossy way and went inside.
The room was a bit spooky. Frederick thought more of a chamber of horrors than of a hospital room. The plastic flowers on the window couldn't change anything about this impression. He looked around, saw the waxen wallpaper, completely held in clean white-washed, rare furniture. Then his gaze slid to the bed and the man lying in it.
Will's eyes were closed. Frederick wondered if he truly slept or only acted like he did in order to eliminate undue interferences in advance.
He ignored the chair next to Will and sat down on his bed instead. The mattress creaked under the added weight. He ignored it.
Frederick remained in this position for a while, watching the face of the profiler. Despite the incorrigible stubble that adorned his chin and lower jaw, he looked almost unbearably young at this moment. People like Will Graham had become almost extinct in contrast to the other human species around him. He was to sensitive for his own good. He was one of them that were easy to kill, easy to maim and torture. Toys of the great powers. Frederick found irony in his thoughts. The whole life was a disaster, in which one was restlessly looking for a punch line that should be never found. For the point of it all that was found in death only.
Frederick sighed inwardly. He soon found himself in the situation of stretching out his hand and watched as it came to rest on Will's cheek, stroking the skin. The stubble poked like little embroidery needles, but it did not feel as uncomfortable as he had thought earlier. The flesh between was smooth and warm and ready to split upon from external influence of any kind.
He did not deserve this fate. Not the burden of his forced transfer, not the nightmares that brought him the murders of other people, not the agony of being constantly quartered internally and sometimes not knowing who he was.
Frederick knew what Hannibal Lecter saw in this man. Not only based on his mental taste or flaming curiosity.
He had never been particularly successful in distributing his feelings by acts or words of expression. He preferred the armor of arrogance, the shell of his sarcasm. Behind his shield, there was much more to discover than that, including vulnerable tissue. Scar tissue at most. Frederick wondered if Will's scars would make an intricate pattern with his own if they mingled their bodies...
"Will?" he whispered, shaking his shoulder gently. "Hey, Will."
His heart pounded with an irregular hardness against his chest. A thin film of sweat glistened on his neck. He wanted to look him in the eyes. Wanted to get the undoubtful evidence that Sutcliffe had spoken about facts and not some silly speculation. If this was the case, he had verbally stomped Hannibal Lecter into the ground for nothing.
Will produced a humming sound out of tune, as the dotted vibrations from his shoulder moved to his brain. He mumbled. Then he blinked frantically, torn from a dream without a name and without light. The lids snapped open and two circles of shimmering indigo got caught in Frederick's greenish iris. He saw the process, the amazement, the fleeting flash of rage, the knowledge and then ... then ... affection. Unadulterated.
"Hey." Will muttered, and despite the roughened tone sincere joy sounded in his baritone. "You're here."
He whispered, as if one had crushed his throat in a vise minutes earlier. He made a move, wanted to sit up but Frederick acted instinctively.
"Don't boil the ocean." he ordered sternly, and was surprised himself about the strange, almost maternal gentleness in his voice. Will gave him no great difficulties. He slumped back, as the psychiatrist put his hand on his chest and pushed him down into the pillows again. Will grabbed it, covered Frederick's fingers with his and exhaled a slowly trembling breath. Frederick took it as a good sign that he wanted to feel his heat and touch, welcomed it in a genuine sense.
"So, did you sleep well?" he asked, trying to substantiate a pathetic joke of relief in their conversation.
"Disastrous." Will replied tinny, cleared his throat. "One nurse has constantly awoken me to ask some banal questions. What's my name, where do I live, if I have pets and stuff. I have no idea why, must be routine here."
Fredericks hand moved from Will's chest to his hair, stroked through the thickish, unruly curls that were a jungle for itself.
"I could denounce a senior physician." he said ironically, chose the words but only half in jest.
Will raised his mouth to an exhausted grin.
"Nobody likes a snitch."
"You like me." Frederick countered cheekily and already felt more in his element, but also so unusually strange it almost hurt.
Will cocked his head. His eyes sparkled as exposed by mosquito nets, but vigilant.
"Hm, like would be said too much. You took quite your time with the visit." he replied and leaned forward. Frederick came to meet him, for he suspected, Will wanted to say something, but could not find the strength to speak louder.
But Will did not speak.
He kissed him.
Frederick was taken aback when the soft lips were suddenly on his. Instinctively he gave them support, so professional / natural, as he could bring up despite the precipitous situation. He had factores such a tenderness indeed, but never thought that Will would require it so quickly. He had rather preferred to plan it like that night after the opera, as they had danced on the balcony, physically and mentally balanced and intertwined. He remembered how Hannibal had broken in this scene and destroyed everything as he usually did.
But Hannibal was not here ... not in this room, and what was even more important, not in Will's thoughts.
He has just been made aware that he has narrowly escaped death. Would you not be hungry for a love confession as well? A proof that it was right to survive !?
The psychiatrist thought of the hardly elapsing hours, after the doctors had laboriously stitched the remains of his body together.
He put his fingers around Will's neck and gently directed him closer, pressing their mouths against each other more forcefully.
The taste of clotted blood ...
He knew the taste firsthand. And he felt a paradoxical sense of belonging, a common experience. Both of them were alone now. They only had each other to rely on.
He liked this concept better and better. As he had found the lost piece of the puzzle to a church mosaic and put into the missing form. He was ... happy.
Frederick had not even confessed under torture that the loneliness gnawed at him.
He was a wealthy man. Rich. He could have bathed in Dollar Bills every Sunday morning as the Countess Elizabeth Bathory had done joyfully in the blood of murdered virgins, but he had money in abundance badge. He lacked nothing. But his house was big, gigantic even, especially for someone who spent his evenings in seclusion. The emptiness was it that flourished, despite all costly gems and equipment. It had bothered him more and more often over the years.
Will would enrich him in more than one aspect. He was quite capable of providing the necessary comfort, just like Hannibal Lecter could. He could show compassion if needed. His colleagues might whisper behind his back, calling him an arrogant bastard (it tired him to deny this), but he was not made of stone. He had a heart like any other and was needy for romantic contact as everyone else. And also the willingness to engage someone in his life, an intimate caregiver instead of the asshole of service everone knew.
The irony was to taste in the air. The aroma of unripe grapes.
Frederick's breath steamed in the air, as they parted.
"I guess that means you're doing better?" he asked. His voice was thickish somehow.
"I live." came the brief, casual answer, underlined with a gentle laugh. The words escaped from now slightly red mottled, swollen lips. "When can I get out of here?"
"They still want to make some tests."
Will's eyes narrowed and the skin around them turned into delicate, pale crumbling wrinkles. He did not like that prospect as it seemed. Frederick understood him. Since Gideon wanted to turn him into a burst piñata, he also had a healthy dislike of hospitals and everything that had to do with them. He only felt safe in his own hospital - the mental institution -. This was his kingdom. His castle. And his office the King's Chamber. He loved to be his own master, but here among these foreign doctors he was not more than a dirty lint would have been in an alcove. His surgical career had proved to be a gross misstep and Frederick avoided to be reminded of these premises. What did not always succeed.
"And then?" Will asked him with an undercurrent of mistrust.
Frederick smiled.
"Then we'll go home, Darling." The nickname balanced foreign and awkward on his tongue, but it weighed in with a sweet component he expected to taste more of in the near future. "Home. Okay? ".
He swallowed a nervous lump down his throat and was looking for Will's hand, held it in a gentle grip. His thumb pad stroked over the sensitive skin around the knuckles. He pretended nothing, he had rehearsed this behavior primarily. But his acting changed, similar to his surgical skills - in lousy area.
The chaste touch relaxed Will visibly, something that made Frederick wonder, when he had always known the profiler as reserved, implying longer eye or body contact not longer than need. Instead, he gave him a smile and gently flickering in his iris. Their fingers were intertwined. Will squeezed back slightly. The accident had left its mark in spite of everything.
"Okay." he whispered. He sighed. "I'm so glad you're here." The syllables were like dead leaves plucked of their trees from the maternal autumn wind and scattered on the yellow grass. The scratches on his cheeks glowed like red painted comet tails.
Frederick reflected the smile with a wider template and forgot to worry about whether he might seem manic or not. "Me too." he said, squeezing Will's hand a little tighter. "Me too."
He would never have guessed that this day, when he had feared the worst, to be endowed with the greatest gift of his life. An unexpected patient AND future partner. Maybe he could turn these twelve weeks he had into something that could last forever. Maybe he managed to outdo even Hannibal by this special opportunity. The great Hannibal Lecter. The impressive Hannibal Lecter. He would take him his beloved treasure and make it his own. He would outdo him, beat him in his own game.
Who should have the power to mess with him now?
He had plenty of time ...
Today, fate loved him to death.
Being able to forget is a great happiness, to be forgotten is a great suffering.
~ Unknown ~