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Title: No Coming Back
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1drabble
Prompt: 40, Alternate Universe
Author's Note: Sequel to "Jumping Off the Edge."
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.

***

Hannibal couldn't be right about this.

His mind couldn't be going completely off the rails. He wasn't that unstable.

He couldn't simply be conjuring up his attacker within his own mind. If that was the case, then he wouldn't have bruises all over him.

An assailant couldn't follow him from his own mind into the real world. The only answer to that theory was that he himself had give him those bruises -- and the idea that he could be harming himself and not know it scared him more than Will had ever thought anything possibly could.

If that was indeed what had happened, then he couldn't trust his own mind. He had more serious mental problems than he had known, and he was falling apart at the seams.

He didn't want to believe that of himself.

Will felt as though he was living in some strange alternate universe, one where everything he knew about himself was turned upside down and inside out. When he looked at his own face in the mirror, he felt as though there was a complete stranger looking back at him.

He looked the same, but the presence staring back at him was .... different.

He didn't recognize the person he saw behind his own eyes. And that realization was more frightening than anything he could have possibly seen reflected there.

It would be better if there was some concrete example of the person who'd attacked him, Will told himself. At least then he wouldn't think he was slowly losing his mind.

He could feel himself losing touch with reality, a tiny bit at a time.

That idea terrified him; he had always thought that he was a sane and rational person, in spite of his empathic ability. He'd always prided himself on having both feet planted squarely on the ground, on living in reality. But now, it seemed that his mind was taking him to places he didn't want to go.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He was feeling more and more detached from the real world the longer this situation went on; the things that he was sure he'd seen couldn't possibly belong to this realm.

If he was sometimes living in some kind of strange alternate universe, there might come a time when, in the deep subconscious of his mind, he would slip into that universe and never come back out again. That was what scared more than anything else.

Will had the feeling that he inched closer to that line that separated this universe from another with each passing day -- and that there would come a time when he would cross that line irrevocably.

When that happened, he would be past the point of no return.

There would be no way out, and no coming back.

***