He was in front of Will, chest full of holes, laughing. Garrett Jacob Hobbs was mocking him, laughing at him, watching him with crazed eyes.

"You are like me"

Will tried to shake off the image from his head, but couldn't. It was all he could see. He was on the top of the stairs and advancing towards him.

"You are me!" Hobbs said and Will was getting very angry.

He badly wanted, he needed to get rid of him. Of that evil spirit forever haunting him. Part of him heard another voice, on the background, calling his name worriedly, but he couldn't focus on it. He was focused on this ghost that was making him lose the little sanity he still had. Hobbs was going to pay, he had to pay for all he had done. He had to get rid of this once and for all. If he wanted to be able to think clearly again, he had to. Needed to. He was going to punch all his fears and then throw them off the stairs. That was what he would do.

Hannibal kept calling Will's name, concerned. He was looking at him in the strangest way possible. Was it something he said? Something he did? He called Will's name to ask him what was wrong but no answer came. Hannibal was starting to wonder if Will was seeing him at all, or if he was seeing someone else. And then, before he could react, Graham punched him squarely in the face.

He was stunned, but tried to get Will to react.

"Will, don't…"

But while he was still recovering from the punch, his patient, his friend, tried to throw him off the stairs.

Will couldn't make Hannibal lose his balance, at first. But he was determined. Then, as if empowered by some unknown force, he shook Hannibal's shoulders, then punched him again in the stomach and pushed him. And watched him fall. It was as if it wasn't himself, as if he was sleepwalking again. Some other that was not Will was using him to get revenge on Hobbs and all those monsters.

But as Will watched the hole-filled Hobbs fall and hit his head on the floor and land weirdly on his arm, he realized there was something wrong about him. Something odd. And that when he realized he hadn't punched a hallucination, but a real person.

And when he landed on the floor, it wasn't Hobbs anymore. It was Dr. Lecter.

Will's eyes widened and he hurried to the Doctor, scared. Had he really done that? Had he truly thrown his therapist off some stairs? He approached the fallen man, who was trying to get up.

It had been a nasty fall and Hannibal's left arm was hurting like hell. But he couldn't lower his guard yet. Will could even want to shoot him if he thought he was someone else. He put his hand in front of him defensively as he tried to get up. His head hurt, everything hurt but he had to be careful. Focus.

Will got closer and Hannibal looked at him, uncertain.

"Will? Is that you?"

"Oh, god… I just… I don't…. I'm so sorry, so, so sorry, really…. If I had known it was you… I don't even understand what happened, I just wanted to get rid of Hobbs and I… I'm so sorry…."

Hannibal breathed, relieved. Of course, if things had gotten too ugly he could have killed Will, but he really didn't want to. He was glad to hear the old Will back.

"Oh, my… you're bleeding…" There was a nasty gash of Hannibal's forehead that was bleeding onto the left side of his face. "Are you… are you all right?"

"I think I might have damaged my arm, but I'm otherwise all right, yes." He said, composed as usual.

"Oh…god, I…Let me just drive you to a doctor or something, in case there's something broken… and that cut may need some stitches, I just…. Let me help you, ok?"

Will nervously took out a kleenex to try and stop the bleeding on the gash, looking at his therapist very concerned. He was an aggressor. He had caused those injuries on a man had only been there too help. He was becoming one of the monsters he chased. He…

"Will, are you all right?" Said Lecter's deep voice in front of him. Time to focus.

"Yes, yes. Are you? But you already answered that, didn't you? Sorry. Let me take you to a hospital or something. Come on."

Hannibal noticed his patient's erratic behavior. He understood that Will was feeling guilty, confused, sad, not at all in control, regretful. Lots of things. He would let him handle those emotions while he could, knowing that he could make things worse for Will very easily by showing pain, or looking hurt. No. He had to be impassive. He could do that.

Hannibal was no stranger to pain.

While they were on the car, Will kept glancing to where Hannibal was. He had thrown the man some stairs, punched him in the face and in the stomach. His psychiatrist. Because he'd thought Lecter was a dead person he killed. Really, really messed up stuff.

"Will, there is no need to feel guilty." The doctor said, because it had been enough and he couldn't stand those sad doe eyes any longer. "You wouldn't have attacked me if you knew it was me. With time, we'll get to the root of your problem and fix it. Now, if you would be so kind to focus on the road."

"Yeah, sure. Sorry."

He had apologized a thousand times. It didn't feel enough.

Hannibal was starting to feel the effects of his fall. After the adrenaline of rush of being attacked and not knowing if Will would attack again, he'd felt invigorated, challenged. But now the emotion had left and only the soreness remained. And the pain coming from his arm. He could handle it, of course he could, and he would to avoid anymore distressed looks. So he pretended not to be THAT hurt. Maybe he could exploit it in the future. But not right now.

They got to a hospital and it turned out that Hannibal arm was broken. A clean break, but a break nonetheless. The doctors efficiently plastered it and put it on a sling and a stitched the gash on his forehead. They gave him drugs for the pain, even if he said he didn't need them. He was always so careful about what he put in his body, he didn't like the notion of strangers filling him with chemicals. And with good reason.

Will had been on the waiting room for what felt like forever when a doctor appeared and told him that a nurse had messed up the doses and that Dr. Lecter would be a bit drowsy and confused from the effect of painkillers for a while. That there had been some drug-on-drug interaction and he would experience a lot of disorientation before the effects of the excess pills wore off. So Will decided to take him home, feeling more guilty than was all his fault.

When he saw him again, Lecter's left eye had reddened from his punch, and that and the stitches on his cut stained his usually flawless face. There were also the sling and the plastered arm, reminding him of what he had done.

Hannibal was feeling strangely out of it, light-headed, as if he were watching everything from a distance, as if the floor was not stable and if he was floating on it. And things didn't have solid edges, they just blurred into the existence. The next day he would be angry about the negligence, but not now. Now he was just trying not to fall on the ground. Steady, Hannibal, steady. There were blue eyes watching him.

"Will!" He chanted happily. "Do you have an appointment?"

Will smiled.

"We're not at your consult, Doctor."

Hannibal looked around, confused.

"Where are we?" Lecter asked Will, almost whispering, as if it was dangerous for other people to hear.

"In the hospital. You broke your arm, remember? I… I threw you off the stairs."

Hannibal was having a hard time processing the simplest things, like what was this place or what time of the day it was. Remembering what had happened earlier in the day seemed almost impossible.

"You did? I thought we were friends, Will."

Will sighed.

"Let me take you home, ok?"

Then Hannibal seemed to have a revelation.

"I know you. You are a patient of mine, aren't you?"

It would be a long night.

Before he finally fell asleep on his bed, Will heard much nonsense coming from the Doctor, something that seemed impossible in the man. Sometimes, he spoke in French. ("Ssssh, c'est un secret!"). Sometimes he spoke he spoke in a language Will didn't understand, of perhaps it was just gibberish. Another time Hannibal simply started giggling for no apparent reason. Another time he told Will he had beautiful fingers, but that he was going to let him have them and keep them. And then he giggled, again.

The world was nice, if slightly blurry. Hannibal didn't understand why Will was there, or how he arrived home but he didn't care. He went to sleep with a smile.

When he woke up the next day he was feeling much worse. His face hurt, his body hurt from the fall and he couldn't move his arm. He opened his eyes and so his bedroom. Now, he remembered everything. The incident in the stairs. Will's guilt. His own pain. The hospital. Oh, how was he going to complain.

"You feeling better?"

Will was still there, still wearing yesterday's clothes. Hannibal tried to become a relatively functional person. His movements were limited by the cast, he was bruised all over but at least he had regained his senses.

"Yes, thank you."

"You had me a bit worried, those meds really did a number on you."

"I am sorry I worried you, then."

Back to the old elegant Doctor Lecter.

Will explained him the different meds the doctor had given for him, even if Hannibal wasn't sure he would take them after that incident. They would talk about the hallucination and the feelings it created another day.

But before he left Will had to ask something.

"Yesterday night, you kept saying Labanakt, mylimasis. I'm assuming it's in your mother tongue, but… what does it mean?"

Hannibal's eyes widened for a moment.

"It is my mother tongue, I was not aware that I had used it. It means "it hurts"... I guess I still felt pain through those layers of painkillers."

A cover story as good as any.

"Makes sense. Well, get better, Dr. Lecter. I'm sorry, again, for what happened yesterday."

"No need for apologies, Will."

Hannibal was glad Will had believed it and hoped he wouldn't ask about that line in Lithuanian again.

It would stain his impassive reputation very much if Will ever learned he had said Good night, sweetheart over and over again.

Damned drugs.

A/N: Did anybody like this chapter?

Reviews brighten the day ;)

Hope you're all having a lovely summer.