Caged
by elfin
He'd expected approval.
He was the Dragon.
He deserved approval.
Dr Lecter was his inspiration.
Dr Lecter was his reason.
Will Graham was insignificant.
Will Graham took Dr Lecter's freedom from him, made a mockery of him.
Lied about him.
Will Graham would sacrifice himself to the Dragon. He would be crushed
by its power, impaled on the point of its great tail.
Swept away in a red sea of pain.
*
The Dragon stands proud over its victim.
In its mighty claw it holds a knife, long and ceremonious.
Cowering before it, the weak prey awaits his fate.
Dr Lecter has already left his mark, deep and red. The Dragon follows
the raised scar with its hot tongue. But the salty taste of skin and
sweat is not enough, and the Dragon takes the flesh between its sharp teeth
and bites, tearing the skin, finally getting the mouthful of blood that it
craves.
Somewhere in the distance, a man is screaming.
It means nothing to the Dragon.
*
Three men stand in front of the large glass observation window.
Beyond it, the Dragon's victim lies in a hospital bed. He has required
hours of life saving surgery, hours more reconstruction to his hands, arms,
neck and abdomen. He now requires twenty-four hour, around the clock,
intensive care.
He's on life support.
If the doctors flicked a single switch, he would die.
But Doctor Mary Clifton, Dr Alan Bloom, nor FBI Investigator Jack Crawford
has the power to make that decision.
Because William Graham has a living will, and it names Dr Hannibal Lecter
as Power Of Attorney.
"We can't."
"We have to. We owe it to Will."
"He might come around."
"He might not."
"His chances are very slight. I'm sorry. If there's someone,
you should get him or her here soon."
*
Dr Lecter stands in the Intensive Care unit and looks at his old nemesis
from behind the mask Chiltern's insisted he wears.
The nurses have asked that the doctor be freed from the trolley used to
wheel him around in. His warders have agreed. And so he is chained,
his wrists and his ankles. He can walk only by shuffling and yet his
loses none of his dignity by doing so.
He has asked for a little privacy with Will, and so only two remain; Barney,
and the doctor looking after Graham.
Dr Lecter is offered a chair, but it's difficult for him to sit with all
the chains. So instead, the doctor allows him to perch on the edge
of the mattress.
This way, with his hands chained in front of him as they are, Hannibal
can touch Will's fingers where they lie above the sheets, poking out from
the extensive bandaging.
The two observers are touched by the way that the infamous serial killer
holds the unconscious man's fingers with such complete tenderness.
"Oh, Will," he says quietly. "I am so sorry. Crawford should
never have brought you into this and I should never have helped put you in
the Dragon's path. He will pay for what he's done to you, my Dearest
Will, you have my word. But for now I have something to tell you, and
I need you to listen very carefully."
*
On the way back from the hospital to Baltimore, the armoured van carrying
Lecter has a blow-out. As the driver and one guard get out to change
the tyre, the second is attacked by Dr Lecter, who cuts his throat with a
scalpel lifted from the Intensive Care Unit where Will is lying.
He kills the driver too. But he leaves Barney alive.
*
An hour after Dr Lecter leaves the hospital, forty minutes after his escape,
the nurse checking Will Graham's catheter is surprised when his fingers brush
her arm.
When she looks up, blue eyes are watching here, unusually bright.
"Will...."
There's panic in his expression, and she starts to calm and reassure him,
calling for his doctor.
After another hour has passed.
The respirator tube has been removed from Will's throat and he's been
given a shot of morphine. He's quiet and calm, drifting in and out
of sleep. Alan Bloom is with him. Jack Crawford's had to go
out to the site of the discovered armoured van.
Will has several serious injuries that will required more skin grafts
in the near future. But he will pull through. And maybe he can
tell them about the man who attacked him.
*
The Dragon looks up as the doctor looms over him. He's imagined
that he's great and powerful. But now, here, in the doctor's shadow,
he is puny.
"You called me beautiful!" The Dragon proclaims.
Lecter bends over him, teeth bared. And a moment later, the Dragon
is screaming.
"Why?!" The word comes out as a wet sound from between half-eaten
lips.
"For Will Graham." The doctor makes sure that the Dragon can hear him
and understand him. "I should have warned you not to meddle."
*
The sun shines through the large window into the private, bright hospital
room.
Sitting beside the bed, Jack Crawford can't help his smile despite everything
that's happening outside those walls, everything that's on the front page
of the Tattler and other newspapers.
Will hands him the card he's just been reading. "I can't believe
he wrote that!" Jack drags his eyes from Will to read the inscription
from one of their fellow tutors at Quantico.
Graham is still very poorly. His physical wounds are still healing.
His mental wounds are deep, buried for now. There is an IV line in
the underside of his left arm that gives him morphine when he needs it.
He's being described in the hospital as a 'miracle'. After eight
weeks in a coma, he woke under controversial conditions. No one is
talking about it. Everyone is hoping that if they don't mention it,
Will won't ask.
But sooner or later he's going to read the papers.
*
"Only three people know what Lecter said to you that day, Will."
Crawford tells him as they sit out in the hospital grounds. "Barney,
Doctor Clifton and Lecter himself."
"I'm not likely to hear it from Lecter."
"Let's hope not, Will."
"I'd like to ask the doctor, if I could? I'd like to know what he
said."
"Sure." Crawford looks at his friend. It's been five weeks
since Will woke from the coma. The skin graft on his abdomen has taken
successfully. His hands are still bandaged, the flesh had been bitten
and torn from them. His arms have healed though.
In a week or so, he's expected to be released from the hospital.
He's going to stay with Dr Bloom until his hands are better, at least until
he has some use back in them.
He has no plans after that. The slate of his life has been wiped
completely clean by the Dragon's brutal attack.
*
Doctor Mary Clifton sits on the chair next to Will's bed. He's sitting
on the sheets, fully clothed, cross-legged.
"What did Hannibal say to me?" he asked her ten minutes ago, and now his
eyes are filled with tears.
"He told you that he was going to escape," she's told him. "He detailed
his every move, from taking the scalpel from your IC room, to how he would
make an incision in one of the van's tyres as they loaded him into the back.
He told you... how he'd kill the guard and the driver, but he'd leave Barney
alive."
Will nodded. He wasn't crying then.
Until she said, "Before he left, the last thing he said was, 'I love you,
Will'."
Mary sits on the chair for a time, wanting to make sure her patient's
all right. But after a while, she leaves, and once she's gone, he
drops his face into his hands and starts to sob quietly.
*
On a balcony of a hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Dr Hannibal Lecter toasts
the lights dancing in the water beneath him.
He has his freedom, of a sort. He won't stay in Geneva long, but
he needed to visit a bank there.
Sighing to himself, he sips his champagne and feels tears in his eyes.
He's left prison behind, but he's left something else too. And it pulls
at him each hour of each day.
One day, he'll return for Will. He knows what the young man must
be feeling, but he also knows that his young protégé is all
right for the time being.
He told the truth in the IC Unit that afternoon, as he sat holding Will's
fingers so gently within his own. He can only hope that Will can believe
him.
fin
elfin
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