Disclaimer: The characters and concepts in this story are the property of Thomas Harris, Bryan Fuller, and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: You can take the man out of the psychiatric hospital, but you can't take the psychiatric hospital out of the man. Will recovers from Baltimore after his release. Post-Savoureux.

Author's Notes: At last – part of the thunder's speech from the poem. I've been looking forward to pulling these sections for a while.

Readers, my deepest thanks. I hope you have been enjoying yourselves!

"DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of moment's surrender"

~The Wasteland (V 400-403)

Chapter Twenty-Five: What The Thunder Said

"The performance has reached a whole new level of gratuity."

"Will."

"Three bodies at once! There wasn't a wall in the room that wasn't blood-spattered..."

"Will, please."

"I knew he had other victims, but he must have bled several more people to get the blood he needed."

"William."

He huffs a breath of antiseptic and pollen, pastel walls and starched sheets. If he had anything in his stomach, Will would be vomiting. His head rollicks with blood and pain and torment. Hannibal knew exactly what he was doing when he carved those people up.

No, not Hannibal. The Ripper.

"William."

Blink. The hospital room hemorrhages into focus and finally stills in his aching vision. Will scrubs his face out of embarrassment, disorientation, the sudden thrust into complete awareness. The scar from Jack's bullet throbs on his upper arm. He's back: before Baltimore, after Minnesota. Abigail Hobbs is dead. Hannibal is a murderer. His brain is on fire. There is so much blood...

"Um..." there's one question he needs to ask before all the others. "What...what time is it?"

"It's eleven-thirty," Lampman informs him coolly. "P.M. Do you know where you are, Will?"

"Hospital," he drinks another mouthful of the ammonia-air. "Not Baltimore...?"

That shouldn't have been a question, but Will's worried he's going to blink again and find himself waking up after electroconvulsive therapy. It's perfectly obvious that he's not in Baltimore. The rooms are nicer here, cleaner and newer, and it's Lampman who's in bed, unrestrained, not a mental patient. She's as patient with him as ever, no matter how wane her recovery has left her. "No, Will: not Baltimore. Do you remember coming here?"

Will hangs his head in shame. He's supposed to be getting better, not worse. "No," he can't even recall the events that compelled him here. Images of a bloodstained walls and contorted bodies flicker through his mind's eye, but Will can't command the pendulum's swing to those moments. He's disassociating, and this time there is no illness to blame. "I don't think I drove."

"You were escorted by an agent," Lampman informs him. He's not sure if the slowness of her speech is for him or from her drug regimen.

"I was at a crime scene."

"Yes. You're clearly disturbed by it."

"It was disturbing...I think. I don't remember. Much. I don't remember much."

"Will," Lampman's voice regains some of its former strength. "Normally, I wouldn't try to curtail your body's natural inclinations, but normally, I'm not on morphine. Would you stand or sit so that I can focus, please?"

He stops pacing, not even having realized he was moving in the first place. Everything is spiralling so madly out of control that it feels odd to take charge over his body. Lampman notices without being told, "Just breathe, Will. We're not going anywhere."
"I might be. I just walked off a crime scene. Jack already thinks I'm unstable. I should just commit myself."

"You're still my patient."

"I'm losing my mind."

"No, you're not. Your mind is under your control."

"I'm disassociating!"

"You're not disassociating. You remember the crime scene. You were speaking about it when you came in the room."

"I don't even know how I got here."

"It will come to you. Will, please," her eyelids flutter. Lampman pinches the bridge of her nose. She can't say anything more.

Will's back flares with pain sympathetically. He's overlooked her injuries and not even the morphine can hold the burn at bay any longer. Lampman's polished veneer is cracking from the pressure. She gasps, winces, and when she finally settles, her bottom lip shakes from exertion.

"H-h-how are you?" he mutters, embarrassed.

"As well as can be expected," she allows herself a rare flash of vulnerability. "How are you, Will?"

He almost cries. "I've been better. I shouldn't have come here. Aren't...aren't visiting hours over?"

"You were very insistent."

"I vaguely remember that," the veil covering the night begins to part in his mind. Will allows himself to breathe. "I didn't know where else to go."

Lampman nods. The movement depletes what little energy she has. "Tell me about your day."

The pendulum swings back easily to the previous night: the phone call with Jack, the arrival at the BAU, the fight this morning with Alana, returning home. Will's remaining memories start to fall in line thereafter. He's able to recall the drive to the crime, the smell of blood, the sight of the bodies, and none of it instigates another panic attack. His narration is cold, clinical, and Lampman's so quiet throughout that he thinks she's passed out cold until she finally speaks.

"Dr. Lecter?"

Will's whole body goes cold. "What about Dr. Lecter?"

"You said Dr. Lecter did all this?"

He searches the floor for answers. "No, no," tremors rattle from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. "No, the Chesapeake Ripper."

"You said Dr. Lecter," Lampman's eyes are open to the thinnest of slits, but her gaze still strikes him to the core. "You said he did this."

"I must have misspoke," Will's panic is on the rise again. "I must have..."

Mapping his cognition takes time, but Will finally reconstructs his thoughts from the crime scene. He wasn't panicking because of the blood. Well, he wasn't panicking exclusively because of the blood. He misattributed the Chesapeake Ripper's crimes to Hannibal Lecter. Gasping for breath, Will wrecks his memory for any indication that he voiced his error to Jack. The older agent wouldn't hesitate locking him up if he can't work without letting his vendetta get in the way of the case. Thankfully, Will only remembers storming away from the crime scene and coming to the hospital to see Lampman. Either Jack was being merciful or Will kept his mouth shut.

Still, the thought is alarming. The connection between Hannibal and the Ripper seems even now so strong, so finite. Will can't distinguish between the two killers. "I made an association," he admits, "between Lecter and the Chesapeake Ripper."

She sees through him so easily. "Sounds like you're still making the association."

"I am."

"Why?"

"There are...similarities."

"What similarities?"

"They're both insane. They're both theatrical. They're both elusive."

"But?"

"The Chesapeake Ripper is a special kind of psychopath. He is atrocity personified," Will pauses, searching for words and finding none. "I don't know what Hannibal is. I know he's curious." Beyond that, Will's impressions grow hazy. The image of Lecter is diffuse and unclear in his mind. "I can see his features but not the motives."

"What about the Chesapeake Ripper?"

"I see the motive, not the features," he laughs lightly. "They make quite a pair actually."

"They complete each other," Lampman notes. She sounds distant, dreamy, but no less attentive to what Will is saying. "Could the symmetry be compelling your association?"

"I don't know. I uh...I think I wanted your opinion, actually."

"Ah," her eyelids fall, "That would stand to reason."

"I shouldn't have come."

"No, I'm glad you came. I wish I was better equipped to see you, though I'm not sure I would be much help. Your suspicions about Lecter are your own, Will, as are your impressions of the Ripper. Is it possible that they are one in the same?"

"No," he shakes his head and hopes the lingering doubt will crumble away. It doesn't: the association is ironclad in Will's mind. "No, they can't be."

Lampman says nothing. Will senses her silence isn't merely from exhaustion. He knows exactly what she's thinking. "I shouldn't have gone back to work," he agrees.

"Why did you?"

"I thought I was better," he wants to say, but the lie is an affront to Lampman. She's the first person to listen, to believe, or at the very least accept. Will can't bear the thought of feeding her a line. She deserves better. "I wanted to be accessible again."

"To Dr. Lecter?"

He nods, his mouth having forgotten how to form the word, "Yes."

"Why?"

It sounds stupid when he says it to her. "I want to expose him."

"To lure him out," she exhales slowly, sighing as much as she is fighting pain. "You are playing a dangerous game."

"I can't afford to play safe."

"Can you afford to play at all?"

"I can't afford not to."

Lampman can't dispute this. She is overcome. Her eyelids twitch skywards and the breath leaves her chest. Will's lower back throbs with the white hot heat of her wounds. He moves toward the bed, towards her fumbling hands. The control for the morphine pump has fallen just out of her reach. "Here," he presses it into her palm.

"No, no," her usual poise is lost underneath pain induced tremors. She drops the pump control and takes hold of Will's hand instead. Her touch burns: one part breakthrough pain, two parts Will's social anxiety. His fingers hand dumbly in her grip, brain struggling to remember proper procedure when it comes to physical contact. The grinding of his knuckles finally jumpstarts his memory. Will forces his fingers to straighten and then grips her hand right back.

The pain in his back decreases. Will is at once centred squarely in his own body, his own experience, only to have Lampman's crushing grasp draw him back inside her. He ebbs and flows like the tide, in pain and outside of it, stopping only when he finally place why exactly she feels so wrong. Lampman is only lying in the bed because of him. Her pain is a response to the problem he poses.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, more to the floor than to her. "I'm so sorry. For everything."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Lampman musters through clenched teeth. She hunches over to hold in all the agony looking to tear its way out of her body.

Will holds her hand even more tightly. He wants to reflect all the strength she needs, but his mirrors feel cracked, dusty. Worse, Hannibal continues to insinuate himself. He's present in Lampman's frail form, the hunch of her back, the hitch of her breath. Will sees the doctor's machinations written into the moment, and he can't possibly hate himself more.

The pain is gone as quickly as it came: Lampman finally releases a breath and sinks back against the pillows. Her fingers spring from Will's hand. He loosens his grip but can't bring himself to let go. There's something comforting about being needed. He's spent so long using his gift to see into dark places that Will has forgotten how to see the goodness he can offer.

(Lampman saw it from the beginning, and unlike Hannibal, she wasn't looking to corrupt it.)

He leaves pieces of himself wrapped up in her fingertips when he finally gets the strength to pry her hand away.

"Will?"

"Yes?"

Lampman doesn't have the strength to open her eyes. She raises a hand off the bed, finger raised. Her lips quiver with the effort of speaking but not a sound comes out.

Will hangs his head just as her expression breaks. Her weeping is stilted and quiet against the silence of the room. She knows. She's always known. All that's left is to apologize and say goodbye. Her tears do both.

"It's the damn morphine," she whispers at long last, "though I can't say I'm pleased about this."

"That makes two of us," Will admits in just as quiet a tone. He's not looking forward to what comes next.

Lampman turns to look at him through red-rimmed eyes. Her old spark returns for a brief moment before fading. Will runs his hand over hers and this time doesn't feel the burn.

Neither of them needs to say a word.

Happy reading!