There's No One Here

Hannibal does what a good friend would do and arranges for Will's neighbors and Alana to take turns feeding his dogs while Will convalesces at Hannibal's house. Will agrees reluctantly to go to there instead of to his farmhouse, uncomfortable with the idea but understanding he isn't ready to be on his own yet, no matter how much he prefers solitude.

Now that Will is essentially a captive – and a pained one at that – Hannibal's experiment with Will darkens. Hannibal enjoys spending time with Will in this state more than he'd expected. Will's suffering has been exquisite. Each of his reactions to a new stimulus elicits a spark of interest from Hannibal, even when those reactions are predictable. He didn't expect Will to resist pain medication so much, for example, and although it's now obvious to him that Will is going to have more pain-related mishaps, he anticipates each one with the sort of zest he usually reserves for a fine cut of meat.

The fact that he cares about Will intensifies everything. His control hasn't wavered yet, but he's come close to being caught off balance. Vigilance is more difficult to maintain. However, even if Will does see something, he hasn't been in the right state to analyze properly. Indeed, his vulnerability combined with their new friendship has afforded opportunities beyond Hannibal's expectations.

Will is coming to a physical plateau as well. He'll continue to improve but the small increments will frustrate him. And as Will reaches that plateau, his inflamed brain will to throw gasoline on the fire of his imagination and to turn this experience into a cluster of horrifying hallucinations and nightmares. The breadth and depth of his terror could not be more delicious.

It's no inconvenience at all, then, to pull the car around for Will when he's discharged from the hospital. He's pale and thinner but he could pass for well enough, though he's rather unfortunately dressed in the sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt Hannibal selected for him from the pedestrian wardrobe in the cheap dresser at his house.

Will wants to protest all the help. Not only is he staunchly independent, he's also sensitive to any hint of deficiency. He remains defensive. The corollaries to a wounded animal are strong. Given Will's regard for animals, he might consider that a compliment.

Hannibal stays close to Will as he limps slowly inside. Hannibal can see in his tense posture that frustration simmers just beneath the surface, needing only a nudge to boil over. Will's anger is beautiful when it blossoms. Visceral and uncontained. He feels it so deeply and completely. He'd lashed out at the medical staff yesterday after a difficult physical therapy session, a sure sign that he was well enough to leave. Hannibal saw then the echo of Hobbs in him and his fear of becoming the beautiful thing he could be.

Will sits on the bed in the guest room Hannibal has prepared for him. His uncertain expression asks, "What next?"

"You will need to change that daily," Hannibal says, nodding at the bandage hidden under Will's sweatpants. "You should learn how to do it yourself."

Will shrugs. It's close enough to a yes.

"It's best to soak the wound in warm water first to keep it clean and improve circulation," Hannibal adds.

Apprehension flashes in Will's eyes, trained on Hannibal's shoulder. "You mean take a bath?"

"If you feel able."

Will looks away uncomfortably. Acceptance.

Each of these indignities adds to his annoyance. Hannibal expects that the outpatient clinic he'll visit later today for physical therapy will get an earful from him.

Will lets himself be led to the bathroom where he sits gratefully on the toilet seat. He didn't take both of his pain pills this morning and Hannibal reads him well enough to see that he's starting to hurt again, though he won't admit it yet. The tangle of experiences, motives, and emotions beneath his stoicism captivates Hannibal.

Will reluctantly removes his sweatpants and has to be encouraged to unwrap the bandage. He looks away at the last moment. The nurses mentioned to Hannibal that Will had avoided looking at his leg each time his dressing was changed. Never one to think of himself in positive terms, Will is now even more self-conscious.

He confirms this by looking over Hannibal's shoulder, squirming slightly, and quipping, "I guess I won't look good at the beach this year."

"I understand that it would have been worse if a different gun had been used."

Will's eyes slide over to meet Hannibal's. "Lower velocity," he says and squints. Hannibal can see the sluggishness of his thoughts as he thinks about how Hannibal knows this kind of violence. His eyes widen as he finds the answer. "You must have seen a lot of gunshot wounds."

"More than I care to remember," Hannibal replies.

Will doesn't break eye contact for a long moment.

"Will," Hannibal says, deliberately not looking at the mess that is Will's leg, "you have to look eventually."

Will stares at the wall for a long time as if to say that he doesn't have to look until he's good and ready. Then he looks down, blanches, and looks away again, his eyes settling on the water filling the tub.

"It's not easy," Hannibal says softly, "but you will get used to it."

When Will glances at him, his eyes are full of so much spite that Hannibal is taken aback and nearly lets his face slip.

Will's jaw muscles stick out as he clenches his teeth. He's a beautiful creature.

Hannibal regains his composure quickly. "If nothing else," he coaxes, "you need to know what clean, healthy tissue looks like."

Will's jaw wavers. When Will glances at him again, sadness has replaced spite.

He sighs and looks down. His face twists with disgust – and with good reason. The sutured flesh sticks up slightly like puckered lips from a mass of fading but still angry bruises. It must ache tremendously.

Will swallows heavily. "What am I looking at?"

Will is accustomed to seeing flesh rent and mangled, not repaired, so Hannibal concisely describes the surgery. He shows Will where the sutures from the surgery have already begun to dissolve, then points out which parts of the wound have healed most and which have healed least. He differentiates the primary wound from the tissue damaged by the blast effect and the surgical team's work.

Will stares at the thin line that runs from the laceration to the hem of his shorts, then looks up at Hannibal. "You did that?"

For a moment, Hannibal is truly taken aback. How could Will know? His surprise slips out and Will sees it and looks at the wall again.

"One of the nurses went into detail about what you did," Will clarifies. His eyes flit to Hannibal's for the briefest moment.

Hannibal stands and places a hand on Will's shoulder. "Ten to fifteen minutes is enough. Sooner if it becomes painful. Call out if you need a hand."

Will glances at him again, nods, and finds something else to look at.

Twenty minutes later, Will says through the door that he's ready. He's sitting on the toilet seat again, wearing the same pair of shorts, looking wrung out and miserable.

"I have to do this every day?" he grumbles.

"Yes," Hannibal answers as he sets supplies on the wall of the bathtub. "After physical therapy is preferable."

"Sounds like torture."

"Feels like it, too, I imagine," Hannibal sympathizes. "You're doing well, though."

Will eyes him disbelievingly, then glances at the iodine, dressing, and bandage.

"What do I have to do?" he asks tiredly.

Hannibal talks him through the process and soon he has a clumsy but serviceable covering on his leg. That he wordlessly holds a hand out to Hannibal rather than using a crutch to stand speaks not only to how tired he is but also to how comfortable he is with Hannibal.

Hannibal smiles to himself as he helps Will to bed.

A scream wakes Hannibal before dawn. Myriad possibilities spring to mind as Hannibal ties his robe over his pajamas and makes his way to the guest room. Sweat, blood, and fear waft down the hall.

Will writhes in a loose ball on the hardwood floor, his hands gripping his thigh like a vice. The V of sweat darkening his shirt suggests a nightmare while the crutches leaning untouched against the bed suggest an attempt at sleepwalking. A bright patch of blood on the bandage evinces torn sutures. Will's groans and hisses and hitched, staccato breaths say the pain hasn't lessened much since he screamed.

Interesting, Hannibal muses as he goes to the bathroom for a syringe, a vial of morphine, and a suture kit. Will was able to ignore the pain of moving his leg off of the bed and onto the floor: his somnabulent state must have been deep indeed. Another instance of the mind overwhelming the brain.

Hannibal draws a sizeable dose of the narcotic, slightly more than Will received in the hospital, and returns to Will's side. He speaks soothingly to Will, not certain whether Will knows he's there.

"You'll be okay," he says calmly as he places a firm hand on Will's hip and waits in case Will struggles. He doesn't, remaining inarticulate as pain devours his world. Each of his well-defined muscles is cable-taut and straining. Complete devastation.

This close to Will, touching him, feeling the totality of his pain in the heat and tremble of his body – Hannibal is awe-struck. He watches, enraptured, as Will thrashes and groans and squeezes his leg. He thinks about the incommensurability of pain. Its defiance of imagination. Its inescapability. Will's pain in this moment is pure and beautiful.

Hannibal has not cared for someone as deeply as he cares for Will in many years, and he has never seen Will in such pain. He savors each tortured gasp. A rare and rarified sensation of sympathy washes over him, as remote from him as Will's pain yet as irrevocably present.

At length, Hannibal slides Will's sweat-damp shorts down to expose his hip, wipes the sweat away with an alcohol pad, and slowly pushes the drug. He has to hold Will's rigid, shaking hip tightly to keep the needle in him. The puncture mark from Will's last shot of morphine is still vividly red against his pale flesh. His muscles are so tight this time. He'll bruise.

Will calms as the tension drains from his body. Gasps and groans turn to whimpers. Whimpers smooth into to shallow, relieved breaths. He cracks his eyes open like he's been reborn into the world.

Hannibal smiles at him as he stops the tiny trickle of blood with a piece of gauze.

Will's cloudy eyes hold questions he doesn't ask.

Hannibal crouches. He drapes Will's arm around his shoulder, slides a hand between Will's chest and his other arm, and pulls him up. He's close to deadweight. Hannibal could pick Will up by himself but he doesn't want Will to know that. Instead, he waits for Will to make an effort to stand before lifting him up with a false noise of exertion. Will gasps when the movement jars his leg. Hannibal puts him down gently and stoops to lift his legs to the bed.

He's completely docile, watching Hannibal through a thick haze of opiate and exhaustion.

"The sutures are torn," Hannibal says with a sympathetic look as he moves a desk lamp to the bed for more light and opens the suture kit.

Will glances down and sees the blood that seeped through the bandage. The hint of color left in his face recedes. He swallows thickly.

"That's what I was dreaming about," he says in a gravelly voice.

"Is that why you tried to get up?" Hannibal asks he cleans the clotting blood from the wound.

"I'm not sure," Will says. "I guess I was sleepwalking, but I don't remember."

Hannibal assesses the damage and decides on a mattress stitch.

"You haven't said much about what you do remember."

"That's because I don't want to remember what I remember."

Hannibal glances up meaningfully at Will. Will's eyes acknowledge the fact of his denial but show no desire to stop it. Denial has become his chief coping mechanism.

"It's not good for you to repress this event," Hannibal councils as he ties the first bite.

Will winces and closes his eyes. He isn't squeamish by any means but this is clearly bothering him. Yet another unanticipated but delightful result.

"I'll get to it in my own time," Will says tightly.

Clenched fists betray psychological torment. Hannibal wonders what it would take to get Will to tell him what underlies this reaction to getting stitches.

"And you will keep detaching from reality," Hannibal says. "Hurting yourself."

Will ignores the last phrase. "I don't have the best reality right now."

Hannibal both sees and smells fear on him. He wants to run far away from his trauma. But as with his pain, there is no escape.

"That's true," Hannibal says, "but are your dreams any better?"

Will's eyes open a fraction. "Do you have any suggestions, doctor?" he says in a tone that would be bitterly sarcastic if he weren't drugged into submission.

"Other than talking about it, no," Hannibal answers. He finishes the last bite and dresses and bandages the wound.

Will closes his eyes again and says nothing. Hannibal cleans up, covers Will with a blanket, and repairs to the kitchen to start the coffee.

As it percolates, he reviews the incident in real time, storing it in his mind like a video recording. He will return to this feast again and again.

Outside, the birds have begun to chirp.