Hannigram One Shots and Things

Metamorphosis

"Yesterday I was clever,
So I wanted to change the world.
Today I was wise,
So I am changing myself."
-Rumi
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Will had always thought that by helping Jack, he was instilling a lasting, positive change in the world around him. He was saving people, that's how he justified the mental strain of it all. As long as he was able to retrace the steps of these killers, move through the shadow they left behind, he would save people.

Did you know? One of the most basic tests done on tools prior to manufacturing is a repetitive stress test. They must undergo this rapid aging and deformation before being allowed into their respective field. Failing should have stopped production entirely. Somewhere along the way, Will had begun moving less through the shadow of a killer than the shadow moved through him—into him. Something insidious had crawled beneath his skin and planted a seed deep within the reaches of his mind. Like the clicking of the rollercoaster cart, like the ticking of the second hand as the hours rushed by in moments, like clattering of wooden limbs as the puppeteer guided the marionette, he felt himself tugged towards a long descent into a darkness he had no desire for but yet promised a creeping familiarity. It was in this darkness that he found himself pulled apart at the seams and rethreaded as the man who killed Abigail Hobbs. How could he have done something to the girl he saw as his own daughter? Surely, he couldn't have hurt he, he saved her.

Will sat in that darkness in his cell, feeling the prickling of the creature growing within squirming inside. It's thorns pushed against his skin from beneath, like the newborn's egg horn scratching out against its encasing membrane. The creature grew until its voice bubbles up his throat, sounding eerily similar to his own, and whispered its sweet command, "I want you to kill Hannibal Lecter." That growing part of him was both deeply disappointed and painfully delighted to hear Hannibal had not perished by someone else's hands when his own had began burning for the deed.

This burning desire manifested itself once more as he felt the bright sunburst of pain flashing in his knuckles as he brought his fist down upon Randall Tier. Like a solar flare across the night sky, the delight in it all became clear. The entrapment and the indulgence of "honoring" him became a blurred line. When had he become so used to the mutilation? Will began to wonder when the first sparks were tossed to the pliant kindling of his mind until it grew to a raging bonfire, golden tongues reaching up to the sky. Only one figure came into the forefront of his thoughts, a dark and foreboding thing who's antlers were a sign of reckoning. Was it himself he was seeing, or was it the monster he'd willingly entangled himself with?

And here he lay, was he in bed alone or back in that kitchen, drowning in tears and blood? Was there a creature writhing in him or was it always simply his own self, shaking out its feathers to finally see the sun after a long slumber? The choices were laid in front of him, neatly ordered like birds on a line. Cut away this awoken beast as if it were a metastatic tumor, hoping that after the scalpel lifted that any recognizable piece of himself was left...or allow the transformation to proceed, to swim in the darkness and emerge like a newborn pup ready to learn the art of the hunt.

Adapt. Evolve. Become.

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"Actually, your soul and mine
are the same,
We appear and disappear
in each other."
-Rumi