The first time Jack visits him in the hospital, after the tubes have been removed and the monitors switched off, Will asks him how they found him and Jack tells him,

�He rang for an ambulance. He made the call. He stayed with you until he heard the sirens.�

Will looks at him and starts to cry. The cries become sobs, the sobs become screams, and the next time he wakes he�s restrained by wide leather cuffs securing his wrists to the bed. He�s glad of it because it means he doesn�t have to look for a sharp instrument to slit them with just yet.

~

He sits on the beach outside his lonely home, stares into the inky darkness of the water lapping at his toes, and asks himself � as he has done a thousand times � why he didn�t know. Or maybe he did know, and he couldn�t accept it, couldn�t face the truth, so he ignored it and pretended it was another part of his fantasy.

Hannibal became his friend, his haven, his rock. Was losing that more terrible than branding him the killer that he was? Did he simply ignore the clues that must have been there in favour of his own needs and sanity, such as it was. Such as it now is, more fragile than fine china, as brittle as old parchment.

�One more push and we�ll lose him forever,� he overheard Bloom tell Crawford the day he left the hospital. �You have to let him go.�

He traces the fine lines across the pale skin of his wrists and wishes Lector had killed him that day.

~

He no longer sleepwalks, and the moose no longer follows him down that empty road, but he does dream. He lies in his bedroom with the sea air blowing in through the open window and the white-washed walls lending nothing to aid his wild imagination, and halfway between awake and asleep he thinks of the love he once thought of as the balm to the open wounds in his mind. He mourns the loss of Hannibal, the gaping hole a serial killer has left in his life, and dreams of the sharp, thin blade slicing through his skin, his hands and Hannibal�s joined on the handle of the knife.

He wakes with the dawn, comforted by the warm feelings left in the aftermath of his fantasy and dreading the day to come, the hours until he can lie down again and embrace what�s left of himself by the man who didn�t need to cut out his heart to kill him.