| 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 prot�g� 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. |