Sweet Ophelia (Hannibal Fanfiction)

Molly

Recovering, like anything else, took time.

Molly didn't know if she would ever recover.

While she stayed in the hospital, Wally stayed with her mother. They didn't talk about Will during his visits, but she knew they were only staving off the inevitable. She didn't know how she was going to do it; Wally was eleven going on twelve, too young to grasp the enormity of the situation but too old to be given a half-assed or sugarcoated story. Her mother was far more perceptive. The weight in her shoulders, the glint of anger in her eyes over the pain Will had dealt her daughter, the way that she gently steered the conversation away from the tragedy — everything spoke to her understanding of the situation.

Molly wished that she could be a child again, gratefully letting her mother deal with the difficult real-life problems, but she couldn't. She was a mother now, too, and she had to be there for Wally.

The first few days out of the hospital passed in a blur. Molly took leave off from work, and her mother stayed with her and Wally for support. But she should've known that if she didn't talk to Wally about what happened, he would learn about it from other, less desirable sources.

That day came all too soon.

"Is it true?" he demanded when he got home from school, throwing his backpack onto the ground. "The kids at school are saying that Will... That he... Tommy — Tommy's mom —" He swallowed and squared his shoulders. "They say he murdered a man and ran away with a serial killer. He left us for a murderer! He's a murderer!"

Molly stepped forward, her stomach clenching in knots and threatening to empty its meager contents; she hadn't eaten in many hours. "Wally —"

"No!" he shouted, stepping back. "Don't lie to me!" Tears streamed down his flushed cheeks. "I promised Dad I would take care of you! And I —" He sniffled and blinked rapidly. "I failed."

"Oh, sweetie..." Molly swept her son up in her arms and held him tightly as his tiny body shook with sobs. "You didn't fail," she whispered in his ear, her grip loving and fierce, running her hand through his hair over and over again. "It's not your fault. It's nobody's fault."

Even in her crushing grip, she could feel Wally shaking his head vigorously.

"It's Will's fault," he sobbed angrily into her chest. "It's all his fault."

Her heart broke, and she merely squeezed him tighter. For what could she say to that?