Title: Just Out of Reach
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Sequel to "End of the Road."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.
***
He should have been more careful of what he wished for.Will sighed softly, burying his face in his pillow. He had wished to get to the end of the all this, and now it looked as though he had done so.
He might very well have to accept the fact that no one had hurt him, that there wasn't some enemy out there who was looking to harm him.
He could have done this to himself. And the more that Hannibal brought up that idea, the more he wanted to believe it. It was starting to seem rather far-fetched to think that he had some invisible enemy, and even more so for him to believe that it was some mythical stag.
A man with the head of a stag? He had to be insane to think that could ever happen. It was some hallucination, some strange dream creature that his mind had conjured up.
But still .... somehow, he couldn't help thinking that the man's body looked familiar. He couldn't quite place where he had seen that body before, couldn't bring it out of his memory.
It was just so familiar, so .... mesmerizing.
But try as he might to bring who it might be into focus, the memory of where he'd seen that body before remained just out of reach, tempting and tantalizing.
It was maddening to know that his mind hid something from him, holding it just out of reach, dangling it like a carrot in front of a hungry horse.
Yet he couldn't bring that memory out of the shadows of his mind, couldn't crystallize it in his mind's eye. Will turned over, opening his eyes and staring up at the ceiling, wishing more than ever that he could find an answer to this, the right answer, and be done with the mystery once and for all.
The biggest question in his mind was just why he would have done something like this to himself. He didn't feel that he deserved it, not in any way.
Hannibal would probably say that his unconscious mind found him unworthy in some way, but Will didn't think that was the case. He didn't think that badly of himself.
Even his unconscious mind wouldn't want him to harm itself, no matter how much he might deem himself as being an unworthy person in the recesses of his own psyche. He didn't really believe for a moment that he had self-harmed, that he had caused those bruises with his own hands.
No, there had been some attacker. But he couldn't make himself believe that the vision out of his own mind had been real. There was no such thing as men with stags' heads.
That had been some bizarre invention out of his own mind, because he hadn't wanted to see who had done this to him. He hadn't wanted to admit it was them.
Which meant that it had to be someone he knew.
Possibly even someone he trusted, Will told himself grimly. But who could it be? There weren't that many people in his life who could take on that kind of a guise.
There weren't that many people in his life, period. And he trusted them all. He would never for a moment think that any of them would want to harm him.
He'd wished to have all of this end, this uncertainty and his burgeoning fear of what could be inside his own mind that would want to hurt him physically. But now Will wished that he'd been more careful about what he had wished for, since it felt as though he'd opened a Pandora's box.
He was still sure that there couldn't be anything so horribly wrong with his mind that he would unconsciously try to harm himself. He wasn't that far gone.
And the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he did have a flesh and blood enemy, someone who was coming after him.
But how did he find that person and bring them to justice?
At the moment, that was what he wished he could do, more than anything in the world. Just find whoever this person was, and put them behind bars, where they belonged.
Was it someone close to him? Will considered the thought for a moment, then pushed it firmly away from him. No, that couldn't be the case. No one who knew him well would wish this kind of torment on him. No one who was close to him could possibly want to hurt him.
Whoever it was, they would eventually slip up, and they would be caught. He had to believe that. If he didn't, then he would sink into despair, and live his life looking over his shoulder.
That was something he definitely didn't wish for in his future.
***
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