Hannibal Lecter lay face-up in a hospital bed. It had been quite a long time since he had been on this end of the hospital system, and it did not please him. A bandage covered his torso, and another wrapped around his shoulder, accompanied by a blue mesh sling. He could feel bruises beneath his eyes throbbing in protest of the harsh fluorescents above his head. The incessant beeping by his ear was like to drive him mad, as was the blaring television across from the bed.
"You're awake. Good," a nurse bustled into the room, a clipboard in hand.
"I've been awake for quite some time," Hannibal muttered, his eyes still trained on the ceiling.
"You should have buzzed me, Mister Lecter," the nurse tittered, scribbling on the clipboard, "Your vitals look good. You should be able to get on out of here within the next day or so."
"How is she?" Hannibal held his breath. The nurses had told him next to nothing about Ophelia's condition. All he knew was that she had survived.
The nurse sighed, throwing a glance over her shoulder, and then leaned down so that her lips were just above his ear, "I'm really not supposed to say anything, but I don't see what harm it'll do. She's fine. Stable. Asleep, but with a great deal of head injury. Not to mention how malnourished she is. The important thing is that she's alive. We'll have to keep her asleep for a while, I'm afraid. You should be very thankful that you were found so quickly by that hunter."
Hannibal nodded, biting down onto the inside of his lip as hard as he could possibly bear, "Thank you very much." His stomach growled and the nurse smiled with sympathy.
"I'll bring you some lunch, then," she collected a stack of papers from the table by Hannibal's bed, "It's chicken salad day in the cafeteria."
"Fantastic," Hannibal resisted the urge to grimace as his appetite instantly waned at the thought of cafeteria mystery meat. He watched as the nurse left, then set his mind to sitting up. A web of wires and pricking needles made the process cumbersome, but he managed to pull himself upright with his good arm and throw his legs over the side of the bed. His chest felt heavy, and with each breath the weight of it seemed to double.
After the car had crashed into the woods, Hannibal had found himself stuck between the mangled metal exterior of the car and the tree into which they had crashed. He had been painfully aware of all of it, from four of his ribs snapping, to the Ophelia-less silence, to the appearance of their unlikely savior.
As if on cue, their rescuer appeared in the doorway. Hannibal did not look up at him; though he had saved their lives, he was sure that this was a part of his plan to tear him from Ophelia again. He would rather have an audience with Freddie Lounds than have to make nice with Will, who he had assumed would have the smarts to stay clear of he and Ophelia after what had transpired in Cambridge.
"How are you feeling?" Will Graham crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe. His tone lacked sincerity. Hannibal could not say he blamed him.
"Well enough," Hannibal stared down at his lap, just barely covered by the dingy hospital down. He despised feeling so exposed in Will's presence. He despised Will's presence in general. It reminded him quite harshly of the feeling of failure.
"And Ophelia?" Will slid his glasses up the bridge of his nose; they had begun to droop, hanging precariously on the tip. He blinked furiously, clearly struggling to maintain his steady gaze on Hannibal's face.
"Alive. Broken, but here. That is all that matters."
Will nodded, "Agreed." At last, they agreed on something.
"She's asleep."
"Not a surprise, really," Will shook his head, "She really must have flown. Was she wearing a seatbelt?"
Hannibal shook his head, "I'm afraid I didn't notice."
"I'd bet money she wasn't," Will rubbed the back of his neck, eyes darkening, "Straight through the windshield and into a cluster of trees."
"I wonder, though," Hannibal's eyes snapped upward, "How you happened to stumble upon us so quickly. With a hunting rifle, no less."
Will pursed his lips, his eyes still trained on Hannibal's bruised face. There was pity in his eyes, but also malice. And anger. It seemed as if strong words danced on the tip of his tongue, but before they had a chance to manifest, the nurse reentered the room with a tray of bland-looking cafeteria food. Will slipped away as the nurse flew into a tizzy over Hannibal, pushing him back down onto the bed and trapping him there with the plastic tray.
The following few days were a monotonous cycle of cafeteria food, needles, and Will Graham. Mostly, he was only a quick flash of flannel passing by the door to Hannibal's room, but sometimes he would linger, perhaps relishing the sight of seeing Hannibal so restrained and helpless. But the majority of Will's time in the hospital was spent in the Intensive Care Unit. Sometimes he passed by carrying flowers. Sometimes he carried small stuffed animals from the gift store. Without fail, Will managed to spend time with Ophelia that should be Hannibal's.
The day that Hannibal was to be released, Will appeared in the hall outside of his cell-room. He was partially obscured by a small gaggle of doctors, but Hannibal could still see that his face was quite serious. His heart dropped. Had something happened to Ophelia? Was she alive? Or had she succumbed to her injuries?
Hannibal's heart fell even further when the crowd of scrubs began to disappear, revealing Will's true conversational partner. Alana Bloom, a file full of papers clutched in her hands, cast a glance over her shoulder at Hannibal. When she realized that they were being watched, she took Will by the arm and pulled him away, toward the ICU. Toward Ophelia.
Hannibal pressed the "call" button on the machine by his bedside over and over, willing his nurse to appear. She finally obeyed, an ornery expression on her face.
"I heard the buzzing the first time, Mr. Lecter," she sighed, "What can I do for you?"
"When can I get up?" Hannibal snapped, "When can I leave this room?"
"If you had waited just another five minutes or so," the nurse began to flutter around the machines, "You would have been brought your discharge papers. But since you're so eager, I'll get you all ready to go and you can sign them on your way out."
"I just want to see Ophelia," Hannibal muttered, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
"You can do that when you're officially discharged," the nurse pulled the IV from his hand and slapped a bandage onto the bit of blood that it left behind, "but as of right now you are still under my care. Now, you have to wear that brace to allow your bones to mend if you're going to insist on refusing a wheelchair. And the sling should be optional by now; your shoulder reset quite easily."
"Alright," Hannibal fought the urge to get up and leave the room immediately. As much as he despised rudeness, he despised not knowing of Ophelia's condition even more.
The nurse plopped a netted bag onto the foot of his bed, "Here are your clothes. Washed, dried, and ironed. I'll be right back with your papers."
Hannibal nodded curtly, taking the bag from her clutches and waiting as the plump woman left the room. Despite the pain that quick movement brought him, he changed quickly, thankful to be back in something other than old polyester. He slipped his arm from the sling, flinching as his shoulder popped.
Without waiting for the nurse to return, Hannibal hurried from the room, going only as fast as the stitches in his side would allow. He wove through the halls, following sign after sign through the maze of rooms and halls until he came to the great red double doors with the enormous letters "ICU" painted across the front. He slipped through them, getting through only on the coattails of an unsuspecting doctor.
The ICU was lined with sectioned-off beds, which were in turn surrounded by machines, pumps, tubes, and wires. He spotted Alana and Will almost immediately, hunched over a bed on the far end of the long room, listening to a nurse who was gesturing to the bed, and presumably to Ophelia. They jerked upward as he approached.
"You're here," Alana cleared her throat, straightening her back and stepping between Hannibal and Will.
"Step aside," Hannibal pushed past her and through the partially closed curtain, ignoring Will entirely.
There sat Ophelia, looking small, fragile, and incredibly broken. An oxygen tube rested beneath her nose, and enormous stitches criss-crossed the side of her head. Her body was covered almost entirely by blankets, but her hands rested gingerly at her sides. Her arms were littered with splotchy patches of purple and green, and her knuckles were red and raw. She had struggled. Hannibal's stomach flopped.
"Ophelia," he knelt beside her bed, ignoring Will and Alana's apprehensive gazes, "How do you feel?"
It took a moment for her eyes to truly focus on his face, "My head hurts." Her eyes were only halfway open, as if she had just awoken from a deep slumber.
"I'll get you something for that," her nurse muttered, hurrying off and leaving the three of them to watch over Ophelia.
"What happened?" she looked up at Alana and Will, her eyes squinting and her chest heaving painfully.
"You were in an accident," Hannibal answered before the others could, "But you're fine now."
"Is anyone else hurt, doctor?" Ophelia stared up at Hannibal, her heart monitor picking up significantly and her eyes widening. He froze, as did Alana and Will.
"P-pardon?" Hannibal stuttered.
"Did anyone else get hurt in the accident?" she began to fiddle nervously with her fingers, flinching when the needle in her hand tugged against the skin.
"You... are aware of who I am, right?" Hannibal was suddenly very conscious of the two pairs of eyes on his back.
"You're my doctor," Ophelia stated, her voice cracking.
Hannibal stared down at her, his jaw hanging open and his mind going entirely blank, "No, I..." His chest tightened and his throat constricted as he slowly began to shake his head. He fought for words as Ophelia stared expectantly up at him, waiting for some sort of doctorly advice.
The nurse appeared to give Ophelia a strong dose of pain medication, so Hannibal was shooed to the end of the bed. Standing there by Alana and Will, he felt empty. Where he expected to find anger, he only found nothingness. Ophelia did not know him. She did not remember him. What did she remember?
Alana pulled the nurse aside after Ophelia had drifted back into a medicinal slumber. Will took a seat in one of the small plastic chairs to the right of Ophelia's bed, and Hannibal to the left, a tableau they were all too familiar with. Alana and the nurse muttered to each other, throwing glances over their shoulders at Ophelia ever so often.
"No parents?" the nurse pursed her lips.
Alana shook her head, "Both dead. Mother when she was a child, and father in the crash."
"And custody has fallen to you, then?"
She sighed, her poker face securely intact, "I suppose. It's really no trouble; Ophelia has always been a good kid. It'll be good for her to be back around family friends for a while." Lying through her teeth was not something Alana Bloom relished doing. But it was the only way. With the help of Jack Crawford and a few of his colleagues in the world of court legality, Ophelia had been legally written into her custody. True, she was a legal adult, but because of her fragile condition, Alana had been able to pull some strings.
When Ophelia had first awoken, she had flown into a panic, tearing at the tubes that were down her throat and in her nose. Luckily, Will had been there to calm her as much as he could. But they soon had realized what the true damage of the accident was. She had not known Alana or Will, and now she did not know Hannibal. When asked what she did remember, she had launched into a slurred recounting of a "particularly brutal" Zumba class and a medicated rant about a girl named Annie DeGroot. She had no memory of the accident, her captivity in Hannibal's bunker, London, or really anything at all. When the doctors had told her about the crash, she had burst into hysterics and had to be sedated.
The doctors had been surprised. Considering Ophelia had flown from the car as far and as forcefully as she did, they were expecting her to remain in a vegetative state for the rest of her life. They insisted that she had gotten off easy. A bit of head trauma and memory loss was an easy out, they said.
Hannibal stared blankly at Ophelia's sleeping face. He watched as her chest rose and fell with every labored breath. The veins in her neck pulsed slowly and her fingers twitched subtly as she dreamed. Her face was bruised and swollen, but she was still beautiful. But he realized he could not tell her that now. She did not know who he was. Or how ardently he loved her. Once, they had been two birds blown together by the same fateful bout of wind. But now he was alone.
For the second time, he and Will sat on either side of the brink between existence and oblivion; it was a fine line on which Ophelia lay. The last time they had manned each side of this line, Hannibal had Abigail Hobbs on his side. But now, he feared, he would lose Ophelia across the line. He would lose her to Will Graham.
That is, unless he found a way to slither back into her plane of existence. He had made her feel for him once before, so why could he not do it again?
He cracked his knuckles, fighting the urge to smirk as the sharp sound made Will jump. The scraggly man's fingers clamped down onto Ophelia's, as if protecting her from the noise as well. Hannibal's internal smirk turned to a scowl. His hand should be protecting her, not Will's.
Something deep inside of Hannibal, something that he took pride in keeping locked away, began to claw its way to the surface. Hot and furious, it bubbled beneath the stony surface of his skin. Watching Will's fingers find Ophelia's, it ripped and tore at his very foundation. His nose twitched. His lips pursed. And the hatred spread.