On the Mend (Hannibal Fanfiction)

Piece III

Will woke up in the morning with a headache. For a brief, panicked moment, he had flashbacks of his encephalitis, of flashing strobe lights and Hannibal's hands massaging his face as he forced a tube down his throat, and his chest seized. He stumbled out of bed and barely made it to the bathroom before he heaved. Afraid as he was to look, there was no ear in the sink. His stomach was empty.

He leaned against the wall and let himself cry the tears he hadn't cried yesterday.

When he eventually stopped shaking, he poured himself a strong cup of black coffee and let the dogs out. Every time his headache surged, his heart sped up, but now that he was no longer in a half-asleep state, he recognized that he'd had a little bit too much to drink the night before. He was hungover, not experiencing encephalitis. Though in some odd way, the overdrinking was sort of Hannibal's fault, too, he thought spitefully.

Yet, even after everything, Will found himself clearing away the fishing lures and tying materials on his desk to have room for the teacup. There were seven pieces in all; there had been six, but the one that he had cut himself on and thrown to the ground had broken in two. There was also a bit of porcelain grit at the bottom of the box, ensuring that even when the pieces were put back together, the cup would no longer be the same.

You know, Will, I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup. He hadn't thought about that conversation in ages, but Hannibal's voice was as clear as ever in his head.

Everything came back to Hannibal at this point. He didn't know why he was still surprised.

Will chewed on his lip as he pulled up Google on his laptop. He knew vaguely what he was looking for, but it wasn't until he typed in "how to fix broken cup" and scrolled through the results that he found it: kintsugi or kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. The presence of Japanese artwork and other artifacts in Hannibal's house was not lost on Will, but he was less interested in matching his carefully-constructed aesthetic and more focused on the ideology behind the art. The only person Will had dated during his time in undergrad had had a couple of decorative kintsugi cups on a shelf in their dining room, and it stuck with him. Repairing something in a way that not only refused to shy away from its imperfections but also made beauty out of brokenness resonated with him on a level that he hadn't chosen to analyze until much later.

It was also an art form that took ages, if done traditionally. Doubts from the night before came back over Will in full force, strengthened by the daylight, his headache, and the panic with which he had awoken. Why the fuck was he doing this? He shouldn't be doing anything for Hannibal. This was the same man who had framed him, drugged him, manipulated him, and traumatized him. Why was he even thinking about this when he was supposed to be doing everything in his power to help Jack put him behind bars? And anyway, even if there was a part of Will that rebelled from that, it was ridiculous to think that such a symbolic, useless gesture would do anything. What could a glued-together teacup really do? It wasn't going to show Hannibal not to kill people that he supposedly cared about, and it wasn't going to bring back Abigail. So why was he trying?

His cellphone rang, startling him out of his spiral. The caller ID said it was Jack.

Will sighed and scrubbed a hand across his beard, contemplating whether to pick up or not. His relationship with Jack was...complicated. He didn't hate his boss; he understood why he did what he did. Jack wanted to catch his killers, and if that meant working Will hard, past his breaking point, even, then so be it. He was the kind of man to subscribe to the idea that you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette, except that the omelette was saving countless lives and the eggs were the well-being of his employees and himself.

There were moments where Will could sympathize with Jack, like with his wife's struggle with cancer, and moments where Jack was almost a friend. But other times resentment stirred in him and reared its inconvenient head. Resentment that catching killers was more important to him than Will's sanity; that when Will had wanted to quit, he'd guilted him into staying; or that Jack pushed his self-sacrificing worldview onto everyone else. Maybe Jack was okay with working himself to the bone for the greater good, but some days, Will just wanted to get away from it all. Take his dogs and move to the middle of bumfuck nowhere to fish and fix boat motors. Get so far away from the killers he profiled that he would no longer have to worry that he was going to become one of them.

But Will needed Jack to believe he was his man in this (he was, wasn't he? he was), so after he stalled as long as he could, he picked up the phone.

"Graham."

"Will. How's it proceeding with Lecter? Has he said or done anything incriminating yet?"

And there it was. No hi how are you, no sorry I called you at 10:30 am on a Saturday, just straight to business.

Hannibal would find it unspeakably rude.

"Define 'incriminating,'" Will said as he laid out the pieces of porcelain and frowned at them. "If you want a clear-cut confession, I told you, we aren't getting one. He's too clever for that."

"'Incriminating' is whatever leads us to catching him."

Will thought of Hannibal admitting that he'd helped Abigail hide Nick Boyle's body, of implicitly acknowledging that he had sent Randall Tier to try to kill Will, or of the history he had with troubled patients becoming killers. Will thought about Hannibal's therapist whispering through the bars, I believe you. He thought of all the times Hannibal had talked about how God must enjoy killing, how he'd coaxed the truth out of Will about how killing Hobbs had felt, or of Margot's confirmation that his other patients were being given similarly "unorthodox" therapy. He thought about Hannibal calmly cleaning his wounds while Tier's dead body cooled on the dining room table beside them.

"No. Nothing."

Jack let out a heavy sigh. "I'm sticking my neck out for you, Will. I need this to work."

Will scrubbed a hand over his beard. "I told you, Jack, I'm a good fisherman. He's in a more receptive place after Tier. I just need a little more time."

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Jack said, "Okay. Okay. Keep me updated, yeah? And if he gives us anything, you let me know."

"Yeah."

"Good luck."

Then the phone went dead. No goodbye, no acknowledgment of the difficulty of what Will was doing, not even a request for more details. The resentment was back in full force. Will bit his lip. Then he got up, grabbed his coat and car keys, and left the house.