Characters borrowed from Thomas Harris and Ted Tally, lyrics and title
stolen from Gregory Mickel
No copyright infringement intended - I won't be making money from this
Strong As I Am
by elfin
"Jack? Will."
"Will! How was New Years?"
A pause. "Jack, it's Lecter."
"What?"
"The Chesapeke Ripper. It's Lecter."
"Oh, God."
"I need to confront him, I need to do this in my own way."
"Will, no...."
"If I don't call in an hour, come over with the troops."
"Will, don't do this. Wait for backup."
"Bye, Jack."
"Will! WILL!"
click.
~
There's something about this thing that scares me
Coming round, I tried to take a deep gulp of air and found my throat blocked.
It felt as if my lungs were filled with fire and in a moment my heart would
explode.
Hands suddenly were on me, pushing me back. The last hands I could
remember were Lecter's, his strong grip once loving turned deadly in the space
of a heartbeat.
I recall trying to fight, but I couldn't have put up much of a struggle,
as weak as I was.
After that, I slept for a while. They told me later I'd been asleep
for three weeks, I had no knowledge of the passage of time.
Later, they told me Lecter had stabbed me, sliced into me, presumably with
the intention of making me his next meal. I didn't believe them.
They told me that I'd died on Lecter's office carpet. Jack, apparently,
had brought in the cavalry and was the first to fine me. He wasn't sleeping
well anymore. I couldn't remember anything more than Lecter's hands
on my shoulders. Not for a long time.
I'd been in a coma, the doctor informed me. But even when I came out
of it, I lay at the mercy of machines, tubes and wires, in an odd state of
dulled awareness. When the nurses and doctors disturbed me I briefly
knew the pain the body was in, but not for long.
Molly came to see me but she didn't bring Josh. She sat and held my
hand for a long time, told me about her family and the next-door neighbour's
dog. She didn't mention Lecter and I couldn't understand why.
Jack visited too, with Alan Bloom. Jack cried, kept telling me that
he was sorry, that he shouldn't have let me go there alone. I recalled
that he didn't have any choice but I wasn't able to work out how to process
those thoughts and turn them into words, so I stayed silent. When Jack
left, Alan sat beside me, the first time he'd ever been alone with me, and
just watched me. After a while, I opened my eyes and watched him back.
I seemed to know that he was thinking about Lecter and me.
The next time he visited, he told me about Lecter. My would-be murderer
was being cared for in the same hospital, in a room a couple of doors down
from mine. He was under such close FBI custody that there were two agents
in the theatre with him when the doctors had operated to remove the bullets
and sew up the wound in his abdomen.
For a time, Alan's words meant very little.
Just over a month after I'd been admitted in a flurry of activity and a
cacophony of sirens and shouting I was moved from Intensive Care to a private
room. It was a relief to be off the machines, to not have so many tubes
filling and emptying my body with whatever substances had been required to
keep me alive.
But as they wheeled me along the corridor, helpless on my back on the bed,
I happened to peer into the rooms we passed and in one I saw Lecter.
He was sitting up in his bed, handcuffed, to the railings, but still he managed
to raise one hand slightly and wave at me. Suddenly I remembered everything.
Everything they'd told me had been true. The man I'd trusted above
everyone else had stabbed me in the gut with letter opener and would have
finished the job by slitting my throat or cutting out my heart if his other
victims were anything to go by. What was worse was that I'd known.
I'd finally realised that it was him I was after but I'd not believed my own
instinct. I'd called Jack to tell him from a phone booth on the corner
of Lecter's street!
They almost wheeled me right back into the ICU when I started to scream.
For a few terrifying hours it was like being back in the psychiatric wing
at Bethesda. I woke with the same awful taste in my mouth I remembered
from back then and knew they'd given me a shot of something. They'd
restrained me, cuffing me to the railings of bed as I'd seen they'd done to
Lecter. Both of us trapped there, held against our will because of
what had happened between us. For a while there was nothing that I
wanted more than to get to the man who'd put me in the hospital and rest at
his side as I'd done so often in the past.
Finally, blessedly, Alan had come to see me. He'd unfastened the restraints
and told me that Lecter was being moved to a high security hospital to recover
and await trial. I was in so much pain by then I had to struggle to
hear his words over the terrible, nauseating pounding in my head and the streaking,
throbbing pain in my side. After he'd spoken to me he handed me a button
and told me to press it if I was in pain. Almost immediately I felt
the relief as the morphine flooded into my system and with my hand held in
his, I went to sleep.
~
There's something about this thing that dares me
The trial had already been going on for two weeks when Jack told me I was
to testify. I told him that they had everything they needed, all the
evidence they could ever want. Lecter's defence lawyers hadn't entered
a plea of insanity, the prosecution was convinced he was insane and wanted
to prove it. I could do that, apparently. I told Jack that I'd
testify to what happened that night and to our professional conversations
that had gone before. I told him I wouldn't speak of my friendship with
Lecter and if either side brought it up I would deny it.
I wasn't able to walk when the day of my court appearance came around.
Jack wheeled me into the court room and would have left me in the chair, but
I wanted to sit up in the witness box, so he helped me up. The judge
looked at me kindly and told me that at any time if I needed a break he would
call a recess. I thanked him, I assured him I would be all right.
I never imagined it would be as hard as it turned out to be.
Over four hours I requested three breaks. Throughout the proceedings,
Lecter stood in the dock and watched me steadily, that maroon gaze I used
to love so much never wavering. Now and again, he smiled at me.
The prosecution lawyer went right back, asked me about my first meeting
with Lecter, my initial impressions. He asked me about the assistance
he'd given in helping the FBI track down Garret Hobbs, a serial killer I'd
shot dead the previous year. When he asked me whether I'd eaten a meal
cooked by Lecter, I had to stop. Jack wheeled me into the rest room
and I threw up.
When we started again, the questioning turned mercifully to the crime scenes
themselves, to my observations, and I was able to separate those scenes from
Lecter himself.
The two other breaks came during the defence's cross-examination.
Lecter's lawyers had come at an astronomical fee. Unable to dispute
the overwhelming evidence, they used the trial to attempt to shame and humiliate
the prosecution witnesses. They asked me when I'd realised that Lecter
was the man I was hunting, how I'd accused him, what my approach had been.
They questioned my reasons for going there that night. They accused
me of leaping to conclusions, of being obsessed with Lecter like so many others
had quickly become.
But not once did they mention our relationship and I realised that they
didn't know about it. I had to ask for a second recess then, for I
was as close to breaking down as I'd been during the whole ordeal.
The judge adjourned the court for the day and Jack took me back to his place
instead of to the hospital. Bella, his wife, made me a wonderful meal
and afterwards I curled up on their spare bed and sobbed myself to sleep
like a child.
On the second day they called into question the extent of my injuries and
forced the prosecution to show the court photographs taken the night Lecter
attacked me. I hadn't seen them before.
The first was of me lying on my side on the floor of Lecter's office, a
pool of blood under my left hip.
The second was taken when the paramedics had turned me over and were trying
to restart my heart. The wound Lecter had opened up was a mess of blood
and guts. I knew then how lucky I was to be alive. Or not, depending
on how you looked at it.
The others were taken by FBI agents at the hospital. Forensic photographs
taken specifically as evidence to be used in court.
I asked for a break and for the second time in two days I was sick in the
rest room at the Baltimore Court of Justice. I'd never seen my own intestines
before and never wanted to again. At one point I begged Jack to get
me out of there and I think he had a word with the judge because when I returned
to the witness stand, the only other question came from the prosecutor who
asked me,
"Do you remember what Lecter said to you when you were lying on his floor
bleeding?"
I nodded and forcing myself to look straight at my murderer, I answered,
"He said, 'I think I'll eat your heart.'"
I didn't tell them that he'd already broken it.
~
There's something about this thing that haunts me
This morning the FBI post room forwarded a letter to our Florida home.
It was from Lecter and there was only one line, written in his perfect handwriting
in the centre of a page of soft paper.
It read, 'Do you dream much, Will?'
A part of me wanted to screw the letter up and throw it away, hurl it into
the ocean or burn it in the yard. I did none of these things, instead
I folded it back into the envelope and put it in the drawer next to my side
of the bed.
I don't dream. I have nightmares. Incredible nightmares that
I wake from covered in sweat with tears in my eyes. That's when I sleep
at all.
Even after I've walked away from everything I'd known, everything I'd been,
it still won't let me go. Molly gave up her life too and came with me,
let me drag her south until finally she dug her heels in and we found this
small slice of stolen paradise.
Yet still I hear his voice in my head, his thoughts mingled with mine.
Knowing Hobbs like this put me in a mental hospital, I don't want to go back.
And somehow I know I won't.
Hobbs was just ideas, fantasies, an insane psyche I slipped too far inside
of and couldn't escape even after he was dead.
Lecter is a real memory. I don't only know his mind, I know his body,
his touch. I know his heart and I loved him desperately.
The madness won't let go of me because I won't let it.
~
I'm fooling myself thinking I have it under control. Facing Lecter
again is the hardest thing I've ever done and now... now I know he was never
out of my head, just hidden in the darkness I'd buried deep in the past.
I was scared to death but not of him, of myself, of my own reaction.
Of this. Even through the glass he can hurt people, no one seems to
understand that. His words, his voice, his eyes all beckon to me.
Turning to him is to turn to a forbidden place. He's a dark luxury I
can't afford to crave.
I lied to Jack, the man who brought me back to where I least want to be
but at the same time need to be. I told him I was okay, that most of
what Lecter had said was probably bullshit. But I can't help but dwell
on it. His words to me, his offer of help when he was the one to inflict
the wounds, was so seductive. I feel like I'm drowning and I'm letting
myself go under.
Why didn't I go home? Why did I want to go into the gym even after
Chiltern told me I was welcome to wait until Lecter was firmly back in his
cell, behind the glass? Where did this courage - the same courage and
therefore the same stupidity that took me to his townhouse alone that night
- come from?
This thing takes hold of me and once I have a killer in my mind I can't
let go until he's caught or dead. Lecter is a means to an end as far
as Jack's concerned. The guilt at bringing me back, at sending me to
him, nips at him from time to time but he sleeps better at nights now.
He thinks I've healed.
Alan called, begged me to drop it and go home, begged me not to see Lecter
again. I told him I had to, told him I was trying to save lives and
he almost spat down the line.
"That's bullshit, Will, and you know it!"
He's right. He knows me as well as anyone ever wants to. Only
Hannibal knows me better and that's part of the problem. Alan's worried
about me, perhaps frightened for me. I love him for that, always have
done. He was the only one who knew about Lecter and me, still is.
The night I told him, over beers in our favourite late-night bar, he smiled
at me and said, "just be careful."
Lecter tried to kill Molly and Josh, getting our address from the girl who
covers for Alan's secretary on Saturdays and giving it to the 'Tooth Fairy'.
Alan fired her.
Jack thought Lecter was after me, he was wrong. Alan called me again,
but all he had to say was,
"Decide between them, then walk away."
I knew what he meant without asking. I love my wife and son.
Sometimes I love them so much it hurts. To have them threatened like
that shook me. But it didn’t stop me from seeing him again. And
this time I challenged him.
I don’t know if I imagined his hesitation then. Was his momentary expression
of sorrow just my mind playing tricks? Moreover my heart wishing it
to be there?
Or was he as seduced by the idea of my death as I was by his existence?
Why do I still need him after so long, after everything he’s done to me?
~
After finding Dolarhyde, or what was left of him, I wanted to see Lecter
one final time. But I couldn’t find a reason. I wanted to tell
him everything that was in my heart, everything my soul cried out for, trapped
in the prison of what was right, what was expected. I couldn’t say those
things face to face.
I decided to write, to put everything in a letter to him. I’d never
have to see him again, he would never be released. What harm could it
do to expose myself to him completely?
I didn’t get the time to write it.
~
There's something about this thing that taunts me
You don't think, you just act.
And later on, you wake in a hospital bed in the sterile white room of an
Intensive Care Unit and you know you're back where you began.
Through the haze of pain and drugs, I might have actually thought, ‘oh no,
not again.’
As I lie recovering from Dolarhyde’s bullets and shutting out the rest of
the world, my floating mind draws up a shrewd comparison between Lecter’s
chains and glass, and my tubes and bandages. Like the last time, we're
both prisoners.
Apparently I told Alan this in one of my more talkative moments, but I don’t
remember. I'm surprised because I don't want to speak to anyone.
Whenever someone sits by my bedside and takes my hand, I pull it away.
Sometimes it takes immense concentration to do so, sometimes it takes me
hours to focus my energy, to send the right signal the incredible distance
from my brain to my wrist. But I usually manage it.
I woke from a coma within a couple of days. Within two weeks I'm out
of Intensive Care. When they insist on having a tube up your ass and
one up your dick, it motivates like nothing else. I wanted out of there.
Molly went to stay with her parents, taking Josh. Alan wants me to
go stay with him when the doctors finally release me, but I just want to
be alone.
~
A couple of weeks after leaving the hospital, I receive a letter sent to
my Florida address. I know it's from Lecter before I open it.
“My dearest Will,
We are even, wouldn’t you agree? I didn’t mean for our Red Dragon
to find you, as you know. A old fashioned stand off is so quaint, wouldn’t
you agree? I imagine it sometimes as I lie staring at four stone walls
and seeing so much, seeing your blood, feeling it on my hands. My way
was more intimate, don’t you think?
I know how you must feel now, Will. I know the pain that’s tearing
you apart, the fears shattering you piece by piece. You’re stronger
than that. It’ll scare you, haunt you, dare you, taunt you, please don’t
let it destroy you.
You’ll always be a part of me, as I know I’ll always be a part of you.
Always yours,
Hannibal.”
Like I said, you don’t think. When I finally do, everything goes dark
for a very long time.
fin
elfin
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