Title: not as you would have us be
Fandom: Hannibal (tv)
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~860 words
Contents: Spoilers through Season 2 (probably only halfway, but I'll err on the safe side), references to physical assault, references to gaslighting, unpleasant mental hospitals, hallucinations

Summary: Will isn't dreaming.

“More wine?”

The words echo in Will's mind, as if Hannibal were standing behind him. It's impossible, of course. Will has been locked away, betrayed, and there is no one in this cell but him.

He hasn't let that stop him from leaving.

Will turns from the bars of his cage, and the room behind his eyes lurches into focus. Hannibal's dining room, of course, lush and textured in blue and gold. The familiar warm brushstrokes of Leda and the Swan swim into view and settle solidly on the wall. The French doors to the lawn are streaked with rain, the air holding a hint of static from a spring storm breaking outside.

Will is sitting at the table, an empty wine goblet in his hand. His shirt cuff is pristine white under a deep blue dinner jacket he has never owned. The weave suggests a gift from Hannibal; it's nothing that Will would have bought for himself. He can see the edges of platters on the table, but he can't quite smell the food yet. Will is sure it will seep in around the edges once he stops paying attention to the unrealness of the experience.

He isn't dreaming.

Hannibal takes Will's silence for agreement and refills the goblet. Time slows enough for Will to watch the turbulence as the liquid spills from the lip of the decanter and splashes down the wall of the glass. Will lifts it to the light of the chandelier, ruby shards dazzling and reflecting. He catches just a hint of the scent -- alcohol, plums, pipe tobacco.

Time shifts back to its normal pace with the soft sound of silverware and plates.

Will sets the glass down, unwilling to play along, even when he wrote the tune. “I've always been more of a beer drinker.”

Hannibal smiles and sets the decanter precisely on the side table with a soft click. “Why am I not surprised?”

Hannibal's dinner jacket is a deep green, the color of the forest canopy at night. No white shirt for him, but a softer gray that reminds Will of the river on a cloudy day. Will knows the shirt is silk by the way it catches the light.

Will isn't dreaming.

His dreams are chaotic things -- surreal, monstrous -- and disconnected. His imaginings were like that, too, once, before he came to the hospital. Will finds it ironic that incarceration has helped to clear his mind. It's the only space he can control.

To the extent that he can control anything.

Because this is not a dream. Which means that he is here under his own power. He made this room, this dinner, entirely of his own choosing. It took him weeks to build the river -- the rush of water, the chill spray, the particular angle of sunlight through the leaves. He sculpted it, down to the last detail. But tonight, the moment he closed his eyes, he came here, as easily as breathing.

“This is better.” Abigail's voice, and Abigail herself in the chair across from him. Her dress is the color of the disemboweled pomegranate masquerading as a centerpiece, her dark hair cascading over one shoulder. “Than beer, I mean.”

Will eyes the glass in her hand, half-empty. “You're too young to drink.”

Hannibal scoffs from his place at the head of the table. “A girl her age can handle a single glass of wine with dinner.”

Abigail rolls her eyes at both of them, and Will starts to smile. Until her hair falls back, and he sees the scar where her ear used to be.

Will flinches, an electric twitch that rattles down his body and drags a curtain of darkness over the room.

But he comes back to himself still at the table. He's distantly surprised that he didn't lose this place, didn't open his eyes in his cell. But no. This place has too tight a grip on him.

Abigail is watching him him with rueful concern, her hair carefully brushed back into place. Hannibal's hand is on Will's.

Will is clutching one of the dinner knives like a weapon. If only he knew whether to turn it on Hannibal, or himself.

"Will." Hannibal's voice is a snowstorm, in the moment before you lie down to die, cold and relentless and hungry. "Everyone is allowed to take comfort sometimes. Even you."

"Am I?" Will flexes his hand around the knife. "I haven't forgiven you. I won't forgive you."

Will refuses to look at Abigail again, even when she speaks.

"It's okay if you do," she says softly.

Hannibal releases Will's hand finally and sits back in his chair. "Or if you do not."

Will frowns down at his plate, feeling faintly ridiculous. This is his world; he made it. If Abigail allows him to forgive Hannibal, it's only because Will's own mind wants the excuse. If Hannibal allows Will to hold onto his anger -- again, it's Will's desire. He controls this world, this place, these... simulacrums of people he thought he knew.

It doesn't feel like control.

"You're both very accommodating," he says, and his voice sounds plaintive even in his own mind.

Hannibal's smile shows all his teeth. "We ask only that you see us as we are."