A/N: Sorry for the long wait, the holidays were quite exhausting so the writing stopped for a while. Hope you all had a wonderful time and may 2024 be better than the last.
This is a bit of a medical chapter though nothing is explicit, please be aware. Also, I'm not a doctor so while I tried my best, there are likely mistakes.
Now on to the story!
Will hated the hospital. Only the feel of Rose's hand clutching his stopped him from turning around and taking her back home.
But he couldn't do that. Rose needed help and it was Will's duty as a parent to get it for her.
The feel of places like hospitals always overwhelmed him, the pain and anguish too strong for his walls to contain. Roselyn hated it too, her little hand white from the grip she had on his.
But looking at the vivid red scar on her little face, Will knew he was in the right place. It was hurting her, and he'd waited long enough to seek a professional opinion on the strange wound his daughter's forehead.
"Come on Rose, we need to check in for our appointment." Will told her, holding her hand in a firm grip.
There were so many people here, all of them feeling some kind of extreme emotion or nerves and Will did not like it. Hospitals were an unique kind of hell on his empathy, one he rarely braved.
Teaching a group of hormonal teenagers was better than this.
Rose tugged on his hand, frowning. "Do I have to, daddy? It doesn't hurt anymore, I promise."
He knelt down next to her, "And what if it starts hurting again? Or starts hurting even worse?"
A grin lightened her face, frown disappearing as her big green eyes turned pleading. But Will knew his daughter, knew that she knew how cute that very expression was. His girl had quite a cunning streak underneath all the curls and cuteness, something that would bring her far.
"Daddy, please?"
"Roselyn." Was all he said, his tone enough to make her back down with a pout. Rose knew when pushing was useless and so she fell in line with only a pout on her face for being thwarted.
Lips twitching in a fond smile, Will squeezed her hand in approval as they approached the front of the line.
The lady at the front desk smiled as they approached, eyes taking in their expressions.
"First time here?" She asked, a sympathetic smile on her face. The nurse radiated comfort, and next to him Rose relaxed a bit.
Will nodded, not meeting her eyes. "I made an appointment for my daughter, Roselyn Graham?"
She typed something in her computer and nodded, "Yes, I see her here. Please take a seat and the doctor will be with you soon."
Murmuring a quiet thanks, Will turned away to find a seat for the both of them.
"It will be fine, Rose." He told her quietly, feeling her nerves rising.
"I'm scared." She admitted in a small voice, gaze flickering from one person to the next before they fixed on something a little distance away.
Will wasn't sure if she inherited his empathy, but he was pretty damn sure she had something extra going on.
Rose had an extra sense of a sort. A nose for trouble, perhaps.
"I know, it's alright." He smoothed down her unruly curls, letting her lean into him. She was still so young, so little. "It's just a check-up to make sure nothing is wrong with your scar. I'll be with you the whole time."
There was a family sitting a few chairs over and Will knew they weren't getting good news. The doctor approaching them felt terrible and Will turned away, knowing what was coming next.
He didn't want to feel what those parents would when they got the news.
"Daddy." Rose said plaintively, a sob building in her throat as she watched the poor family get the worst new of their lives.
The mother started sobbing, arms wrapping around her pale son as the father stood behind them, face stoic even as the tears started running down over his cheeks.
Scooping his daughter up in a well-practised move, Will sat down with Rose in his lap. Face turned his way, he wasn't surprised when she buried into him.
"Close your eyes, darling. Breathe, and picture a wall like I told you." He instructed softly, one hand smoothing down her riot of curls. "You built a wall all around you, and inside that wall there is just you. You are safe, Rose. I promise."
He had worked for years on how to push others out of his mind and it still wasn't perfect, but he could help his daughter with this. Though he hoped with all his heart that she wasn't cursed with his affliction, he had the tools to help her if she did.
"Mr. Graham?" A voice asked, and Will looked up to see a young looking doctor standing there.
The doctor flushed, and Will tried not to sigh at the attraction he saw there. He hated his face and the reaction others had to it, but what he hated even more was how they disliked their own attraction to him.
People got to know him, learned about his disorder and suddenly they changed.
It happened often enough that Will just didn't bother anymore. He had Roselyn and that was enough.
"Yes." He told her, standing up with Roselyn on his hip, her arms around his neck.
The doctor nodded and smiled at the girl clinging to him. "Hi, Roselyn. I'm Dr Takane."
Rose eyed her, feeling braver while in her father's arms. "Hi."
Dr Takane smiled invitingly, pretty and comforting. "Please follow me to the examination room."
The room she led them to was clearly designed for children. Bright colours and cartoon figures creating a happy, if slightly plastic, atmosphere.
"So," Dr Takane said from behind her desk. "What seems to be the problem?"
Will cleared his throat, "There is a problem with her scar."
Dr Takane hummed, eyes drifting to Rose's forehead. "That looks likes it hurts. When did she get injured? A few weeks ago?"
He blinked, "No, she had it when I got custody. Over two years ago."
"What?" Dr Takane blinked, then narrowed her eyes. "That's not possible. The mark looks fresh."
Will shrugged, unable to explain it but Rose piped up, "I have it since forever ."
"Oh?" The doctor asked, smiling in the direction of his suddenly brave daughter. "And where did you get it, Miss Roselyn?
His daughter flinched and Will tugged her closer, comforting her silently with his presence.
Quietly, he told the now regretful looking doctor, "Like I said, she had it when I got her. Her mother and her husband passed away, suddenly, when Rose was around fifteen months old and it wasn't a natural kind of death. We think she got it then."
"A bad man came and took mummy and papa." Rose added, repeating what Will had told when she asked about her mother. He still didn't know much, the letter still containing most of the information he had. But she understood, and her dreams told her even more though they confused both of them.
Green light. A high pitched and cruel laughter. A woman screaming.
Will didn't mind she called James Potter papa, the man had raised his daughter for the first fifteen months of her existence and had defended her with his life. He deserved to be remembered for that, however impossible that seemed with the little information Will had.
Just a name in a deeply strange letter.
James Potter didn't exist, and neither did Lily Potter nee Evans. Not after she'd turned eleven. There were no school records after she'd reached the age of eleven, no medical reports or even a marriage license or death certificate.
Nothing.
Her sister on the other hand, well, Will had found Petunia Dursley nee Evans quite easily. The sister of the brilliant woman who'd given him his Rose had lived a well-documented life.
She lived in Surrey with her husband and son, and Will took great joy in using his criminal profiling skills in making life difficult for them without implicating himself.
After all, no one knew Petunia Dursley had a niece so how could she, and therefor Will, have anything to do with the trouble they kept finding themselves in?
That was one loose end he would be taking care of in due time. For now he was content to let that awful family life in fear for what they did to his daughter.
Slowly ruining their reputation, life, hopes and dreams as he did so. Because he wasn't that merciful, not when it concerned his daughter.
Will was a fisherman, he had the patience for the long game.
They were going to suffer.
Roselyn squeezed his hand, bringing his attention back to the regretful looking doctor. She was young and inexperienced, probably barely out of medical school yet Will knew she was good at her job.
She loved kids, his empathy told him. And after losing a sibling to a slow acting illness, this young woman decided to help children like her little brother.
Admirable.
The young looking doctor paled, wincing. "I am so sorry to hear that. Do you have her medical files? I see we have nothing on file here."
Will scowled, taking care that Rose couldn't see his expression. "No, unfortunately I didn't get more than a note when my daughter was left in my care."
"Not even an incident report of the accident?" Dr Takane blinked, and Will felt her surprise.
"Nothing but my daughter and a note." Will confirmed, a wry smile forming on his face at the badly hidden dumbfounded look on her face. "Peculiar, no?"
"I'm very special." Rose confirmed with a serious nod.
The two adults looked down at the girl and they chuckled, amused.
"Yes, you are." He pressed a kiss in her hair, feeling the coo the doctor was supressing. Women liked the look of him, Will knew that. They liked it even better when they saw him with Roselyn; a single father being like catnip for them.
Their attraction pressed on his shields, sometimes making it difficult to discern where their interest began and his own feelings ended.
Will wasn't interested in trying to fit some woman into his life just to give his daughter a mother. She had a mother already. They were perfectly alright on their own, just the two of them with their dogs.
Rose was his priority.
"Well," Dr Takane said cheerfully, standing up as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. "Let's take a look at that scar of yours."
Roselyn tensed in his arms but she didn't move. Will tried to project a sense of calm but he didn't particularly like it either. He never liked it when others touched him, and neither did Roselyn.
Still, the young woman was careful as she gently touched the inflamed patch of skin. "Does that hurt, Roselyn?"
"A little bit." Rose admitted, frowning.
Dr Takane hummed, "Does it often hurt?
Rose shrugged, turning her face away. Will met the woman's eyes above her head and expanded, "As you can see the skin still looks very inflamed, like it's fresh instead of years old. She also has headaches, nightmares and sometimes it bleeds."
"It bleeds?" She was frowning now, and Will was starting to get worried. "Spontaneously?"
At Will''s nod she frowned deeper, "And she had this wound for at least two years?"
"Yes."
She didn't seem bothered by his curt reply, eyes focused on the vivid scar on Rose's forehead.
"That is indeed peculiar." Dr Takane stated, smiling down at Rose. She moved back to the seat behind her desk and caught his eye. "Alright, it sounds like something is still in there, something that prevents the wound from fully healing."
"Like what?" Will asked, worried.
She pursed her lips, "I will be honest with you, Mr. Graham, I have no idea. Perhaps a piece of something that broke off during the incident or even a parasite."
He swallowed, "A parasite?"
That didn't sound good, not at all.
A professional air settled over her, and she nodded calmly. "Please don't worry, Mr. Graham. You and your daughter are in the best possible hands here. Johns Hopkins has an excellent paediatrician ward."
"Okay." He breathed out, keeping his voice as calm as possible. "What are the next steps?"
"I will schedule her in for a CT-scan and possibly an MRI as well." Dr Takane explained calmly. "We'll also take some blood, to make dure everything is as it's supposed to be."
"Needles?" Roselyn asked, voice small.
The doctor smiled at her, "Just a small one and you know what? Brave kids even get a cookie afterwards!"
"Oooh!" Rose suddenly seemed a lot less worried about any needles in her future and Will shot the doctor a grateful look. Dealing with frightened kids wasn't fun when you had an empathy disorder. "I like cookies!"
Will chuckled, "So that's all it takes?"
She raised her chin and told him pertly, "I like to be bribed this way, daddy. You know that."
That he did indeed. Much like the dogs he had all his life, Will knew how to motivate his Rose. Give his daughter the promise of a cookie and suddenly she could move mountains.
And apparently, it also helped with her fear of needles.
Roselyn calmly walked next to him to the place where her blood could be drawn. Her hand in his, Will did his best to focus on her and not the people around him.
It went well, Rose calmly sitting down in the big chair and holding her arm out. She was looking at him instead of the needle going into her arm, as the kind nurse advised.
"Cookies." She said solemnly as she clenched her fist to help with the blood flow, all big green eyes in a pale face when everything changed.
The needle had barely pierced her skin when the lights above their heads broke, making sparks rain down on them.
The nurse startled at the sound of glass breaking and the needle went in deeper as his arm jerked. Rose whimpered in pain and the hairs on the back of Will's neck rose.
Something was wrong.
The scar on her forehead started bleeding again, turning swollen and red. Rose was pale, a thin layer of sweat covering her body and Will was getting very worried.
"You okay, darling?" He murmured, wiping away the blood running down her forehead. Will eyed the tube attached to his daughter, frowning at the nurse when nothing was happening.
There wasn't any blood coming though the needle, making the nurse frown. A strange pressure bore down upon them but only Will seemed to notice it.
"Daddy? I don't feel so good." Rose voice was small, drawing his attention back to her. The pressure rose as the tube in the nurse's hand shattered, startling them all. Then his daughter's eyes rolled back and she started seizing.
"Rose?" Will's heart was in his throat, panic making his heart race. "Rose!"
The nurse thankfully acted quickly, removing the needle and shards and positioning Rose safely on the floor so she couldn't hurt herself.
"Mr. Graham, has your daughter a history of seizures?" The man asked urgently, and Will's eyes shot his way.
"No. Not at all." Was all he said, kneeling down next to Roselyn. She looked so pale.
Will was afraid, very afraid. This wasn't normal, or something easily cured. Seizures were serious and watching his daughter experience one, Will was very much afraid.
The seizing had stopped now, but she hadn't regained consciousness yet. Had Will done this? By insisting the scar needed to get looked at? He'd felt that surge of power when the needle broke her skin, it had the same feel to it when something mysterious happened around Rose.
Like when the cookies he'd hidden up high floated down in her eager hands, or when her favourite shirt grew too small and suddenly it was the perfect size again.
That strangeness, however weird it was, still felt like Rose. Like his daughter.
But this time it felt angry.
This was the kind of electric pressure in the air that made him believe that there might be something truly magical about his daughter.
The nurse nodded, looking like he wanted to pat Will's knee in comfort. "Alright. I've paged for a paediatrician and they will take a look at your daughter. They will get to the bottom of this, I promise."
Will they though? If this ailment is magical in nature, can the doctors here help his daughter? He hoped so, he really hoped so.
A knock on door and two other nurses with a gurney entered. They swiftly and carefully laid his daughter on it and together they moved to a new floor and room for a further look.
Rose got moved over to a hospital bed, looking utterly small in the big bed and wheeled to a private room.
Another white coat-wearing doctor was waiting there, deep in conversation with another doctor, this one wearing scrubs. A resident was waiting quietly by the door, ready to start acting whenever one of the doctors told her to.
"Dr Lecter, my next appointment is here." The female doctor in the lab coat told him, politely and with obvious respect in her tone.
Will's gaze fixed upon the man's chin, vaguely noting sharp cheekbones and thin lips before his attention went back to his too-still daughter laying in a hospital bed.
"Mr. Graham," The female doctor greeted, her smile professional and confident. "I'm Dr Jones and this is my colleague, Dr Lecter, who has a surgery to get to."
The female doctor was an open book to Will, her concern for the little girl in the bed soothing for the father inside him. She'd been a doctor for over half her life now, and knew very well what she could do.
This was a doctor who loved her job, someone who would do her very best to ensure Rose would be hale and healthy again.
Rose got wheeled to the middle of the room, where Dr Jones quickly hooked her to multiple machines. The heartbeat monitor beeped comfortably, and Will took a deep calming breath.
She was going to be alright, she had to be.
"Mr. Graham." The doctor named Lecter greeted softly as his eyes scanned Rose's way too thin file, a faint eastern-European accent in his cultured voice Will didn't care to debate about in this moment. "Dr Takane was on the right track, there is likely something in there."
"Hm?" Will asked, not caring he was being rude. He sank down in the chair placed conveniently at Rose's bedside, gripping her limp hand in his.
Dr Jones looked up as well, her dark brown, grey streaked ponytail sweeping off her shoulder. "You think it's parasitical in nature?"
"Most likely." Dr Lecter nodded, and Will raised his eyes to meet his.
Red.
Cunning and a calm self-assurance. Brilliance and ambition, yet nothing more. Will met the brown, almost red eyes of this doctor and felt nothing deeper like he usually got from people.
Peculiar.
Dr Jones hummed thoughtfully, lifting one of Rose's eyelids to shine a light in them. "Then we'll need to operate."
Lecter smiled thinly. "Has there been any bloodwork done?"
Will sighed as the two doctors turned their expectant gazes on him and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No. She started seizing as soon as the needle pierced her skin and we never had to go to a doctor before this."
"She'll need a CT-scan first, and preferably also an MRI." Dr Jones pointed out, brow raised in rebuke in Dr Lecter's direction.
"That will allow us a better look as to what is in that scar." The doctor conceded gracefully, lips quirking and Will suddenly realised that Dr Jones had mentored the younger doctor. There was a relationship there, more than the basic respect of one colleague to another.
That little smile made Will's instinctive dislike for the poncy doctor wane just a bit, realising that Dr Lecter was more than what he appeared to be.
A strange thing for Will to experience, because usually he understood a person a lot better from the meeting of the eyes he got from Dr Lecter. It appeared that the good doctor had tall forts indeed, something he had in common with Will.
Rose twitched, eyes moving behind her closed lids. Will traced a finger from her forehead down her nose, soothing her as he had many times before.
She settled quickly and Will closed his eyes for a second, ignoring the probing eyes on him from Dr Lecter.
Will hated doctors, almost as much as he hated psychiatrists. It was like they knew there was something wrong with him and he always worried that they might be right.
"Interesting." Dr Lecter approached the bed and Will tensed, unsure. "It is unusual for a scar that happened years ago to keep bleeding. As are the headaches and not the seizures."
Dr Jones nodded, following along with keen eyes. "It's escalating."
"Can you help with whatever is wrong with my daughter?" He demanded, turning the full force of his attention on Dr Lecter. He'd kill for her, die for her but most of all, Will would life for her.
Rose was his, and he was hers. They were a pack of two humans and many dogs and they did not leave anyone behind. So if this arrogant doctor thought he could fix whatever mysterious ailment Roselyn had, then he better well fix it.
The man blinked and his throat bobbed in an almost invisible swallow before he gave a confident nod. "I can."
Will bared his teeth in a threatening smile, standing up. "Then get to it."
An MRI alone would take a while, let alone a CT-scan and the surgery itself. Will needed his daughter awake and healthy and he needed that as soon as possible. He didn't care what he had to do to make it happen, as long as it actually happened.
"Very well." The elegant man agreed, intrigue blooming in his peculiar eyes. Sharing a look with his colleague, Dr Lector appeared utterly confident as he ordered a passing surgical resident. "Prepare Miss Graham for surgery."