Title: waiting for my deus ex machina
Fandom: Hannibal (TV)
Rating: 16+
Length: 2k words
Content notes: Murder, cannibalism, temporary (and permanent) character death, dark!Will, sanity slippage. Set during s1e13.
Author notes: I wrote this in one sitting and ended it right before midnight. I'm very proud of it.
Summary: Will is stuck on a time loop of the day he got arrested. He exhaust all options throughly.

Will wishes he could pretend this is an encephalitis-induced hallucination, a long dream he can't manage to get out of, but he feels clear enough to know that this is as real as it is getting. And as it turns out, he's stuck in his own, terrible version of Groundhog Day, and he only knows that movie via references, but enough to know that it's what it's happening to him.

A time loop, his mind provides. He's stuck in a fucking time loop. When he passed out after Jack shot him, he regained consciousness back in the police van, looking at the man in front of him, his hand around his thumb, ready to snap it to incapacitate them and then go to Hannibal's office. And he knew immediately that this wasn't him dreaming.

He's gone through it dozens of times, and he can feel his head swimming every time he wakes up back there, ready to escape his fate.

He goes through all the possibilities that go through his head. All the things that could maybe, just maybe, let him continue on with his life.

The first, he doesn't fight. He gets put in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane without having to get shot beforehand. He hopes that's what ends it, but after he falls asleep in his cell he's back in the van. That one is the least eventful.

The second, he incapacitates everyone in the police van and goes to Hannibal's office. He steals one of the police officers' gun and enters Hannibal's office, leaning against the bookshelves.

"Hello, Will," Hannibal says.

"Hello, Dr. Lecter," he says, standing up.

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

"Clearer and clearer," he says. "About you, and about me." He takes his gun from his pocket and he fires at Hannibal without a second of hesitance or regret.

Hannibal falls to the floor, wide eyes and mouth open, about to speak; with a hole right in the middle of his forehead, the bullet lodged in his brain. Will manages a smile and for one second he wonders if he should dispose of the body in a way Hannibal would, but he doesn't come up on how he would— he takes surgical trophies, sure, but he's stuck on what he does with them. He ignores it and goes to dial Jack's number.

"Hello, Jack." He tilts his head, a soft hum leaving his mouth.

"Will? You're at Hannibal's office?"

"Yes," he drawls out. "I just shot him."

"What?" Jack exclaims. "Will—"

"You won't ever see a Chesapeake Ripper murder again, Jack," he says plainly. "But you can come and arrest me all you want."

Chilton seems elated by the news that Will killed Hannibal, while Alana is staring at him with abject horror in her eyes. He can't blame her; Hannibal worked very hard on blinding her. Jack looks jaded beyond his years as he pulls him into his cell.

When he goes to sleep, he hopes that this is it, that this is his way out. But it isn't.

The third, he decides to circumvent what caused him to get shot— Hannibal won't kill him. He's unsure why, but Hannibal's goal with him is to toy with him… wind him up and watch him go. He's fascinated with him in a way he isn't with the pigs he slaughters.

So, he can rest assured that, perhaps, if he removes Jack from the equation, Hannibal won't end him.

He goes through the motions normally. He breaks out of the van, he goes to Hannibal's office, he 'makes' him drive him to Minnesota, until he sees the huge amounts of blood all over the place. He looks at him with hatred in his eyes.

"You don't have to lie to me anymore, Dr. Lecter," he drawls out.

"I am not lying to you, Will," Hannibal says plainly.

"I know what you are," he says. "The scales have fallen off my eyes. I can see you now."

He's not even pointing his gun at Hannibal, too preoccupied with aiming and shooting at someone else for that. When Jack comes in, with his gun aimed at Will, he smiles. Jack's mistake is lowering his gun once he sees Will isn't aiming at Hannibal, which prompts him to aim right at his head with no moment for doubt.

The blood splatter goes all over enough to have some on Hannibal's hair.

Will smiles at him. "Why did you choose me?" he asks. "Why are you fascinated with me enough to not kill me?"

Hannibal licks his lips. "Because we're just alike," he says, simply and plainly. Because we're just alike.

Will can't find it in him to think that is incorrect. He knows he's right, deep down, in his subconscious haunted by the death of Garret Jacob Hobbs. He knows that Hannibal looked at him right there and then and saw him, saw the darkness lingering behind the surface of a kooky FBI academy professor.

"I'm going to take a nap," he says. "I'd appreciate it if you killed any FBI agents that came our way."

Hannibal chuckles dryly. "Consider it done, Will."

Will goes to sleep in Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs' bed, and he doesn't wake up in it.

He spends many other loops trying to figure out if he has to kill Hannibal a different way to get out of it.

He lets him speak, sometimes— he lets him go on before he shoots him. He lets him take him to Minnesota before shooting him. He doesn't shoot him (whenever he tries this, Hannibal ends up overpowering him and saying that he didn't want to kill him before snapping his neck— he wakes up in the van in a cold sweat every time). Sometimes he stays still and asks him if he's a cannibal, and Hannibal's little smirk tells him everything he needs to know. Sometimes he kills him and then finds himself digging a knife into his ribs, like he's looking to eat his heart. This is after zoning out heavily, so he blames that.

Whatever way he kills Hannibal, it doesn't work. He can go about it a hundred different ways and he'll always end up back in that godforsaken van.

He's growing more desperate with each loop. He just wants to break free from all of this, to go back to time working normally, whatever the answer for that might be.

In one of the repeats, he gets out of the van but doesn't go to Hannibal's place. In fact, he doesn't go to anybody's place. He goes to the woods and stays there. He gets hungry as the night sets, and he doesn't know what to do. His house is a crime scene, so he can't go back to his cabin.

He spaces out and finds himself digging into a man's guts. His eyes widen and he stumbles back, bile rising up his throat. He's adding more and more murders to his conscience with every passing repeat, the kills becoming part of his genetic makeup, of his skin, of his entire life. He can see himself becoming more bloodthirsty with each passing minute, to the point of dissociating and finding himself having killed a man.

He eats his guts. He knows he's eaten plenty of human meat before, albeit this is the first time doing so knowingly. He can't help but smile as blood dribbles down his chin. He's free.

Maybe this is it— maybe what he needed to do was be in the woods, be a feral creature, killing men who walk into his territory, eating them. He can make a campfire and cook them properly some other time.

He falls asleep with a full stomach, hoping this is it. But it isn't.

He's exhausted all the possibilities, so he goes for the one that is the most stereotypical and most ridiculous.

He can't deny the way he's grown attached to the various versions of Hannibal he's seen in these repeats of this day— the smug man who admits his crimes, the smug man he kills and eats because he can and because this might be what frees him and if it doesn't it has no consequences on what their relationship looks like, the pretentious man who lets him point a gun at him, the man who smiles at him as he talks about how he's trying to ruin his life. The man he's tasted between his teeth, carnage and blood and guts.

(He tastes divine. Like a fine wine waiting to be taken a sip of for half a century. He's begging to be eaten.)

So, on the one hundredth and twenty-second attempt (yes, he's keeping account, albeit a tad poorly), he takes Hannibal to Minnesota, and he never points a gun at him.

"What do you plan to do, Will?" Hannibal asks, smiling at him. "Shoot me?"

"Jack will be here soon," he says, matter-of-factly, because he is. He has it down to a schedule with how many times he's gone through this scenario, over and over and over again. "I don't have the time to shoot you."

(Once he killed both Jack and Hannibal, made a feast out of their flesh.)

"You could have the time to, if you wanted to."

"But I don't," he says.

"Then what do you want, Will?"

Will steps closer to him and grabs him by the collar of his shirt. He can smell his cologne, a rosy scent that makes him dizzy. He yanks him closer, and Hannibal gasps a little in surprise.

"I want this," he growls before cupping his face in his hands and kissing him.

Hannibal kisses back, and that's when he realizes that's why he doesn't want to kill him, why he's fascinated with him. It's a crush; pulling pigtails like a grade schooler— the way a psychopath would. He gasps into his mouth and keeps him close to him, his gun on his pocket.

"Will! Put your hands up right now!"

Hannibal stops kissing him only to grab Will's gun from his pocket and then shoot Jack clean. Will looks over and sees the blood seep from the back of his head and pulls Hannibal into another kiss, biting at his lip hard until he draws blood. He licks over it, tastes Hannibal's blood against his tongue.

"I didn't think you'd join me so early, Will," Hannibal says, breath ragged.

Will thinks back to tasting Hannibal's heart, ripping it apart with a knife and with his teeth. He shudders.

"A lot of things happened before I decided to join you," he says. "The FBI will come here soon."

"We'll take care of them," Hannibal says. "I can take care of them on my own, too, if you'd like to rest. You've had a long day."

Will smiles at him and kisses him again. "I've had a very long day, Hannibal," he says. "But I can slaughter some pigs with you before I rest."

They do exactly that. The carnage is brutal, of course, and the Hobbs' house has blood splatter pretty much everywhere when they're done.

"Are we going back to your office?" Will asks, pulling Hannibal toward him to lick some blood off his neck.

"After taking a nap."

"At Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs' bed?"

Hannibal laughs, a soft sound that leaves his mouth with ease. It is the most genuine sound Will has ever heard out of him. "Indeed," he says.

"I hope I wake up here," he says.

"You will," Hannibal promises him.

He means it as reassurance; he doesn't know all he had to go through to get here. He sincerely hopes that this is it, that breaking and kissing Hannibal Lecter, the Chesapeake Ripper, is what breaks the spell that's kept him bound to this fateful day.

He's eaten so many people in between, felt his soul darken with each attempt, with each kill. He can rest easy now.

They both curl up in Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs' bed after a quick shower. He's a little fretful, but he clings onto Hannibal, him mumbling nonsense into his ear to calm him down, purring deep into his skull.

He wakes up with Hannibal's arms around him, in Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs' bed.

And he smiles.