Not Until We Are Lost

The reality of their situation had well and truly sunken in and taken hold by now. Even Will could not convince himself that he had been dreaming all this time. He could understand why Dr. Lecter had tried to keep him locked up in his own room, even if for a time he had resented Hannibal for it. He wasn't sure what Hannibal Lecter thought about how Will Graham would react to these... unusual circumstances they found themselves in - and 'unusual' was trivialising this spaceship they were on - but Will hadn't acted out or broken down or anything of the sort.

In fact, once he'd come to terms with his... (alien abduction?) predicament, he was more relaxed than he had been in the past few months. It had very little to do with where they were now, and more to do with how removed he was from Wolf Trap and Baltimore and the sirens and the blood and the voices and the madness. When he'd embraced his new reality, even if he had trouble believing that this was all actually real, he'd had his first dreamless sleep that he thought he'd thrown away forever since Jack Crawford walked into his lecture hall.

He didn't have to be afraid here, in this cold, metal womb that housed him. Not of killers, not of police officers, not of a psychiatrist pretending to be a friend (entrusted with too much - friendship: Where Hope Defies Logic) and not of himself. Perhaps it was alright to not run around like a madman chasing serial killers and violent phantoms leaving a bloody trail wherever they were wont to drift towards. Maybe he needed to be here, to be in a place where everything was wrong and unnatural and abnormal in order to be able to find himself again and find the peace he was looking for.

But there never seems to be a dull moment to be had whenever Dr. Lecter is involved.

"You know, I was wrong about you, Dr. Lecter," Will said quietly to his wall, to where Dr. Lecter's image would be standing if that wall was a mirror that could capture everything that stood before it and reflect all their imperfections and flaws back to them.

"You are interesting."

Will had been under the impression that once the encephalitis was treated, the hallucinations and the lost time would stop. But he'd still been undergoing treatment before he was brought here and he couldn't find the medication that he'd been put on after turning the room upside-down.

So he'd lie awake in bed until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, and then a disturbing dream would jolt him awake again - each time, back in this same place, as if it was trying too hard to convince him that this was all real - until one day he'd become too exhausted to even dream, and sleep felt like a blissful way to die.

He'd only fallen asleep for about two hours when he got out of bed, put a jacket on and left his room. There was a trail that only the sleepwalker could see and follow, and he didn't seem to be overly keen on responding to anything else in the corridor.

While he might not have intended to start a commotion, he did manage to attract the attention of everyone in the vicinity as he burst out of the front door of his cabin clumsily and loudly and collided into the corridor wall. The thin grey t-shirt he was wearing was damp with sweat, melded to his back, and tendrils of dark hair clung to his forehead.

As he slipped down to sit on the floor with his back to the wall, trying to control his laboured breaths, he seemed to be focused on watching something in the centre of his room. But there was no one there, and nothing in particular that should have sent him scrambling out of his room in such a panic - it was just the bed he'd been sleeping on.

Not for the first time, he felt cold and alone and afraid - very much afraid, more likely of himself and his mind and his perception trying to deceive him with a devious little sleight of hand - and looked bewildered as he tried to figure out how he ended up here.

The way he was still panting as he wrapped his arms around his chest and pulled his legs in close made him look as vulnerable and miserable as he felt.