Will's body betrayed him. There was nothing except the rabbit scream of his heart and the cold rush of air past his lips to tell him that he still lived. There was a voice somewhere over his shoulder, but he couldn't discern words through the thick cotton that seemed to overlay every sense. He was afraid, so phenomenally afraid that it was a marvel in and of itself, something that he was more than happy to cling to because it carried the weight of his self-preservation within it. It bid him to be quiet and still and wait, quarry in a brush in the thick winter silence of Hannibal's mind. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. Every concrete line of his being was woven into breathing and slowing his heart rate to something acceptable.

Breathe, the voice said, but he heard 'exist'. It was impossible to live in the limbo. The space between them was taut, thinned to a mere thread of connection so bright and tenuous that he was sure simply breathing would be its unmaking. Surely now, he'd die. Perhaps now. This breath. Now, this one.

No, the voice told him, and Will's heart refused to listen. Panic drove him into absolute splinters, and some sound on that last exhale resembled a screaming laugh, a horrified funeral giggle, as all that remained of Will shook the snow and sprang from cover.

Hannibal's arms locked around his chest, the spring cut short by superior placement of weight. Lucid for a handful of seconds, he didn't recognize the room he woke in. A low fire muttered in the corner, throwing large shadows over a library, and a desk. A hooded lamp glinted from its depth, and an ornate rug covered the distance between the desk and…the bed. Hannibal's bed, Hannibal's room. His hand throbbed, trapped between his body and the mattress, pinned to his side by the sure grip holding him still. He quieted, and the grip loosened only slightly, but Will was thankful. He blinked hard against the dark, watching the shadows warily to—

To mind the stars? The nonsensical thought carried all the weight of a hammer in his mind, and his head lolled slightly against the pillows. What the hell did that even mean? Hannibal was speaking again, but the words blurred together in his ears and bled away without recognition. It was immensely frustrating. And curious. Some animal instinct told him to keep his eyes on the dark, to watch for the movement that meant he'd failed again. Nothing flickered there except the fire, and Will denied the fear, studying the flames instead. Warmth began to creep into his extremities…rather; he became aware of them once more and in the same moment realized that he hadn't been before. Slowly stretching his ankles and his wrists, rolling his shoulders in the broad arms that held him, and bit by bit, the world came into focus. The context of it all returned to him, and he was sure that somewhere in the very center of his brain, at the apex of all that made him human, there was an ember of rage waiting for the body to follow suit and explode. Nothing about this felt sane. Nothing about it felt real, or fair. Everything, every solid, real thing in his current moment existence reeked of Hannibal. Even the sheets.

He clung to that anger, because in that moment, it was the most tangible scrap of himself to be had. "What happened?"

"…Is happening." Hannibal corrected gently. Will took a long breath through his nose and out again, and flexed against the doctor's hold on him. The arms tightened again, as though laced with steel. "Stop. Will. You're going to make it worse. There are no stars here, right now, and I need this lucid moment with you to apologize."

"No."

"Yes, Will, I had not anticipated the breadth of your…empathy. Truly, I overestimated your defenses in the matter, and I'm afraid there are a few hours left."

"Left of what?"

"…The tea."

"Ah." Will replied bitterly, slowly running his tongue over the edge of his teeth. His nerves were a source of static at the moment, any given sensation highlighted with absolute clarity to the detriment of all others. There was something tacky in the creases of his fingers, and he tested it, letting it dry to powder and roll away. An intense flash of Hannibal in the dining room, bloody and curious, made him flinch. The words hissed through his teeth as the arms gripped him again, trapping him to the bed, Will snapped over his shoulder, "Fucking brilliant, doctor."

He felt Hannibal stiffen behind him, and could just feel the slight narrowing of his eyes, but the rage was catching. Will shrugged against him, a short, frustrated rock of his shoulder that he hope belied how very, very badly he wanted to punch the doctor in the face. "What did you give me?"

"Something curated." Hannibal bit off, and Will deadpanned, fervently trying to set the man's desk on fire with his glare. The doctor continued. "And brilliant. I don't have the patience or inclination to describe it to you."

"I told you that you would redefine rape." Will muttered, blinking as the fire hazed out of focus for a second. He frowned, but it didn't come back, and slowly, so slowly, the feeling in his extremities began to fade, color bleeding from the scene before him.

Just over his shoulder, Hannibal sighed, a trace of warmth over his neck. "Will. You're about to go to a very dark place…a place where your body and mind exist separately of one another. If you continue to insult me, I'm going to make you go there alone. And I will leave you there, in the dark, desperately trying to balance your frantic heart and lungs until you are a maddened, worthless wreck of a human being, a shell of your former self. I will lay waste to all that you are and aspire to be. I will leave you an empty, desecrated piece of meat, Will."

The arms tightened again, cold overtaking his stomach and chest as the stars began to flicker overhead again, thunderously silent and reaching—"I will do exactly, that."

It would be easy, Will realized, watching the stars watch him and the quiet of Hannibal descended around him like a heavy cloak. There was nothing he could do to prevent him from administering more of whatever this was; this acid trip anxiety attack cum laude. He could imagine any number of ways that the doctor could do what he promised, and no, none of them felt like options that would leave who he was as a person intact in a meaningful way. He said he'd wanted this experience to be genuine, and it was. Will simply hadn't anticipated Hannibal being so well versed in this work. He waited, and the room seemed to move around him. After a second, he realized he was rocking slightly in the doctor's grip, and he seized that second, that blink of control that left him firmly seated in his own mind again, to protest, "Don't."

Hannibal didn't answer him. Will asked again, the cold forcing its way into his heart again and closing his chest in tiny increments as it took ground. "Don't leave me there. You…did this. To me. I didn't—"

"Hush."

"You asked me. To look, and I did, and you can't—"

"Will." There was warmth in the doctor's tone that shattered whatever the rest of that protest had been. He lay shaking, willing a traitorous body to listen. "You are here of your own volition, though I have opened every door. You don't have to leave alone."

The pain blossomed low in his skull again, a sudden, unyielding crack, as the claw went in, and Hannibal's fist tightened in his hair again. "But you also don't have to leave."

XXXX

Waking up was an improbability in those long hours of dark. Will felt the world apart from and above him, a smooth surface of still water miles away and just within reach. He fought for it, clawing his way out of the depths of it and wondering what he was leaving behind. Wondering why he was still so heavy. There was no air here. There was nothing but silence and the knowledge that he was going deeper, despite his every refusal to let it happen. Will fought forever in the long dark, waiting for the sun to reach down and catch him before he settled in the mire that waited below, but nothing came.

XXXX

Fingers closed on his jaw and tilted his head up. The fire destroyed definitive features, rendering Hannibal's face an elusive and changeable thing, a living mask with two dark eyes behind it that saw the world. Will shied from it, but Hannibal's hands were firm, holding him still for inspection. He thought for a moment that he broke the surface, feeling the dark recede to his ears and trickle down the back of his neck. He tried to gasp air into burning lungs, but the doctor's knees remained tight around his ribs. The panic welled up again, the cold black pooling higher, back in his ears, his mouth, and Hannibal's hand settled on his face and pressed him back to the pillow, holding him under.

XXXX

Warm fur. He could smell his dogs. He knew this, and in the next second, he knew he was breathing too quickly, so rapidly that it hurt; his chest sore and his throat raw. He tried to open his eyes, but they didn't answer, leaving him uncomfortably blind. Seeking hands found small ribs and soft ears, and Will's touch became insistent, gathering the dog close and inhaling against the fur. A long tail fanned against his legs, but no puppy wiggles shook him, and for that small mercy he was grateful. One of the older boys, then. He imagined Sequoia's brown eyes and dignified expression, and his face smiled on its own. Taking control of his body was like grabbing at fireflies. Every chance to regain some twitch of the foot or turn of the head threatened to release the others from his grip. He focused intently on breathing on his own, at a pace he determined. An hour or so into the night, with Sequoia's tail steady against his leg for good measure, he managed to take a long, luxurious breath, and released it as slowly, pleased with himself. It would be okay to sleep now, he knew. It felt better. He settled into the blankets with his dogs, another quiet scrap of life in the heap of furs. It occurred to him as he drifted off that Sequoia had died the previous summer.

XXXX

Gray light filtered through rain and clouds, too bright to be dawn. He didn't know the time when he finally managed to open his eyes again. His hand lay next to his face on the pillow, and he experimentally flexed his fingers, curling them into a fist. They answered, and that was a beautiful thing, to watch his body respond to a mental command after hours of being locked away inside this meat cage. Meat, and bone, and blood that he'd had since birth, and none of it had listened to him. He felt the dissonance with a new clarity, still slightly removed from the way he applied pressure to the mattress, how certain muscles tensed and others didn't as he pushed himself to sit up. There were no dogs, nor the scent of them, and he frowned in confusion, feeling for his glasses.

A blurred outline a few feet away shifted and came into focus, Hannibal in a fresh shirt and slacks. The doctor offered him his glasses and Will put them on without meeting the man's eyes, taking in the details of the room that had been lost to him. The walls were lined with thousands of books in simple bookshelves designed for function. They were elegant, but not ornate, and Will knew they were his, made by hand to fill every spare inch with storage for the works both historical and modern that dominated the room. His desk was placed comfortably against a wall, and rather similar to the one that he'd bought for Will's tack and materials. The bed was large enough. A small, jagged line of fresh sutures crossed his palm, but it wasn't deep and remained numb to the touch. He realized abruptly that he was wearing clean clothes, the sheets were changed, and swallowed thickly at the idea of his night-sweats invading Hannibal's perception of him. The embarrassment became immediately bitter when he realized that no, it was likely not just sweat that had warranted the change.

"Stop. Thinking." Hannibal ordered quietly, standing not quite over him at the bed's edge.. "I have made my apology, and taken steps to protect your integrity through the night. I had wanted to embarrass you, I would have."

"I wish you'd respected me enough to let me come to my own conclusions about who and what you are."

"You haven't come to any conclusions. Nor have I. If I'd wanted to know every sordid detail of Will Graham, I could have taken them last night. But you asked that this be genuine. So I did not."

"I trusted you."

"A mistake, perhaps. I considered this a calculated risk in our friendship."

"I think you're a little generous in your description." Will sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I feel...crazy. For allowing that to happen."

Hannibal regarded him coolly, so composed that Will compulsively wanted to wreck him, everything- tear his pristine shirt, split his lips, break his nose this time- the doctor's words pulled him back from his fantasized violence, "You are not crazy, and you did not exactly allow it. I took liberties with the expectation of a more...formative defense, on your part. Bluntly, I feel you have done nothing to protect yourself from your pathology. The anchors you use are not adequate. The methods are underdeveloped and generally weak."

Will bristled at that last, and Hannibal amended. "You are not weak, but your mind is a sheer cliff and you are either in control of it or...not. There is no gradient for the descent. There has been no effort to attempt to build one."

"I thought we'd agreed that I wasn't your patient."

"If you were, I'd be writing this down, and you'd never hear a word of it. If you were a patient, there'd be a certain degree of contempt in place to keep me separate from the mess of you. Imagine my frustration."

"Yours?" Will's nose curled, galled. "I just spent the night in hell...to what, entertain you?"

"To demonstrate my self-control, actually, but if you don't have any interest in developing this innate talent into something useful, I've likely wasted my time."

"It is useful."

"In the strictest sense, yes, but I don't relish the idea of turning you inside out every time I wish to look in the mirror." Hannibal returned to the abandoned desk chair. "I don't believe you understood what you were offering. Or perhaps, more accurately, you didn't understand what I wanted."

"Genuine. Useful to you." Will did not move from his place on the bed, watching the older man and hovering between his rage and his frustration. "I have never needed more than what I've built. I've never offered this...ability, not as a personal service. It's expected of me. You're expecting it now, admittedly."

"I do not require 'fixing', Will." Hannibal reminded him. "I gave you an infusion of mushrooms, opiates, and a mild steroid. My intent was to help give your exploration a...path, so to speak. A curated tour of my dreams and their role as a distillate of my personality."

"Even if I cared what your intent was, the method-" Will shook slightly, fixing his eyes on the man's for the first time and willing him to feel how close he was to hatred, to the wanton destruction of every cultured impression he'd made of the doctor. Hannibal did not flinch, and that was worse, somehow. "Was base."

That struck a nerve. Will could not pinpoint the defensive brace that washed over the older man at his choice of words, but he bullied on, snapping lowly. "You tricked me. You drugged me. I feel like you cut me in half, and I didn't want that….I didn't allow it."

Hannibal leaned back, reaching over his shoulder to pick up a small notebook. Will raked a hand through his hair, noting it was...clean, slightly damp, and it fueled him on, "You stuck your fucking hand in my head, Hannibal. Without reverence, without...respect. It was rude on a good day, and fucking reckless on a bad one. You can't...meddle in here, this is me."

"And I, am?" Hannibal interjected as he was inhaling to begin a rant in earnest. The notebook opened to let a pencil slip into the doctor's fingers, and closed gently against his thigh. The sound made Will lose his train of thought. He glanced at it, momentarily free of the doctor's eyes, and Hannibal repeated the motion, lifting the small book and letting it fall. Again. Tap...tap...tap, Will shook his head, uncomfortable with the amount of focus he was directing at the tic. Hannibal didn't speak again, and Will's brow furrowed, torn between the man's face and that sound. That sound reached into him, and a crack appeared in his reality as he recognized it. As though to confirm the idea widening his eyes, Hannibal turned his wrist, tapped...and turned the notebook away across his thigh. Sequoia was dead. Not only was Sequoia dead, there had never been a dog in Hannibal's room. Will was looking at it, at the 'tail' he'd used to time his unsteady breathing when he'd woken alone in the dark. The idea was horrifying, the reality was-powerful. He blinked hard, pressed his eyes with his fingers as he tried to reconcile the idea that he'd been so disconnected that Hannibal had kept him alive with a fucking notebook. As though mocking his tiny epiphany, he heard another, cleaner, bright sound. The pencil ringing on the desk as the doctor rolled it between his fingers. And that, he felt more than recognized. He sat in silence while Hannibal found and maintained the beat of his heart. Together, he felt it was a map of his life, a fleeting, tentative thing that bore only this definition for the moment, the constant in and out and below that, the ticking clock of muscle. Hannibal never wanted for King's gestures, ever. Will met his eyes with uncomfortable clarity, running the doctor's warning through his mind again as he listened to it. He'd gone to a dark place, yes. He'd drowned in it. He'd asked Hannibal not to leave him there alone, caught between his mind and his body as he fought to keep both running simultaneously. And he hadn't, Will realized...Hannibal hadn't left him, and he'd opted to maintain these physical aspects of him, leaving his mind largely untouched aside from the tools he needed to work. His greatest comfort, the dogs...and Sequoia, his unspoken favorite and oldest friend, Hannibal had pulled that memory from the tangle of panic, pain, and nightmarish imagery to soothe him, bring him back into a position to keep himself alive. The nightmares were Hannibal's. Surely, he'd owed Will at least that much.

The understanding was still bitter, but he couldn't answer the man's question. Hannibal was the man that had kept his heart beating. The notebook and pen kept time with him for a moment longer, then slowed and stopped. Will hid his mouth behind his injured hand for a moment, thinking. "Am I supposed to thank you for that?"

"No."

"Good, because I can't." Will answered, dropping his eyes to hover somewhere near the man's chin. "And I can't do this if you don't respect me. And I don't know what you want."

"I have told you, Will, I wish to be known." Hannibal answered, some tired expression settling into the corner of his face. "It will become apparent. And I will not drug you again until you have a progressed enough to withstand it. But I am not going to coach you, either."

"I'm not sure I still want to do this."

"I'm not sure I'd allow you to turn me down now." Hannibal reminded him, "I have a stake in this matter."

"Hannibal, you're not asking me to look at you. You're asking me to coexist with you, and I'm not...comfortable with the idea. I can appreciate the ease with which you might have fucked me up last night, okay? But I can't credit you for not doing something wrong. I won't elevate your self-control in a contrived moment of weakness on my part. You can't take that from me."

The doctor's lips pursed, but he nodded shortly. "I know. But I do want you to understand that my interest is not entirely selfish. I would like to help you, in exchange. I am aware that what I am asking is not easy. But I also genuinely believe that you are capable of it. There are things I wish to know. Questions I have never been able to answer because I have never allowed myself to consciously be all that I am in one place in one time."

Hannibal stood, smoothing his shirt and taking a step towards the door. "I want to know if I'm capable of love, Will. And hatred. And ecstasy. And rage. I want to be greater than the sum of my parts."