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The smell of chlorine assaults his senses first.
Will groans as the fog of unconsciousness fades away, wrinkling his nose.
“Don’t move,” someone orders, and he flinches, but forces himself further into consciousness, taking note of the rope biting into his wrists and neck before peeling his eyes open and blinking away the remaining grogginess.
“Matthew?” he rasps, frowning in confusion. “What—?” His own wobbling cuts him off, and he gasps as he glances down to find himself balanced on what looks to be a bucket.
Matthew grins at him. “You’re not the hawk I thought you were.”
Will shrugs as best as he can, forcing his muscles not to shiver in attempt to warm his exposed body as he flexes his fingers to spread some feeling back into them. “I can’t be blamed for your assumptions.”
“I did as you asked,” Matthew says, and, for a moment, a sharp kind of concern seizes Will, rendering him speechless. But then he registers the bitterness in Matthew’s eyes and he exhales softly, allowing his eyes to slip shut, frustrated by his own internal conflict.
“I didn’t tell them what I discovered,” Matthew continues, either oblivious to or uncaring of his mixed emotions, “but, then again, neither did you.”
Will opens his eyes just to roll them. “I did tell them. That’s why they deemed it best to lock me in a cage.”
Matthew clicks his tongue, sauntering over to him until he’s directly below where Will is suspended from the ceiling. He can feel his heart pounding against his ribs as Matthew smirks up at him, and he’s abruptly filled with the urge to gouge out that infuriating, knowing expression. “But you knew the truth long before they locked you in a cage,” he says quietly, smugly.
Stiffening, Will glares down at the other man. “What makes you say that?”
“It took me all of, hmm, ten minutes to figure out he was the Ripper,” Matthew replies, “and I know all about you and your empathy . You may not be a hawk but you’re still a bird of prey, Mr Graham. And we all know how to recognise one another.”
The noose around his neck seems to constrict, and Will has to tear his gaze away and tip his head back in order to feel as though he can breathe again. He shakes his head once he can. “Where are we?” he asks.
“You are where he was,” Matthew whispers, something reverent in his tone, and Will’s eyes widen as the meaning of those words dawns on him. He thinks he should be angry or upset at the turning of the tables but, much to his own confusion, he’s almost glad he’s experiencing the same predicament Hannibal had. He wonders distantly whether anyone would care enough to interfere with Matthew’s execution this time, though.
“How did you mean to kill him?” Will asks, his voice low.
He blinks and there’s a knife pressed to his wrist. A sharp inhale, and then he laughs, unable to stifle his amusement entirely. “You tried to bleed him out ?”
Matthew cocks his head to the right. “You don’t see the appeal of letting him repay the blood he’s spilled, drop by drop?”
Despite knowing he shouldn’t indulge this line of conversation in case the room is wired, Will shakes his head. He leans down, ignoring the sting of rope against his jugular, and shakes his head. “Your strange interpretation of intimacy reassures me that your failure was the best possible outcome.”
He knows he shouldn’t have angered the other man, so he’s not surprised when the blade presses into his skin and brings forth a sharp burst of pain. Will clenches his jaw, keeping his eyes locked on Matthew’s as the knife is pulled through several layers of his skin, peeling apart his forearm and allowing all the blood inside to escape, to slowly ooze over his fingers and drip drip drip to the floor.
Psychological or not, he immediately feels lightheaded, and has to blink away ink splatters from the edge of his vision as Matthew traces the wound with the edge of the knife. “I did not fail,” he says calmly.
Will snorts. “No?”
“I couldn’t become the Chesapeake Ripper. But maybe I was never meant to. Art has never been interesting to me, Mr Graham, but you…”
As Matthew shifts over to his other wrist and the bloodstained blade touches the skin there, Will can’t stop himself from wincing and instinctively trying to pull away. He wobbles as a result, almost having forgotten the precarious positioning of his feet, and bites his tongue to stop himself from giving Matthew the satisfaction of crying out.
“You are the most interesting predator I’ve ever seen,” Matthew continues, grasping Will's fingers tightly and kissing the back of his trembling hand; Will is so very tired of being considered interesting .
"It would be even more of a pleasure to subsume your kills," Matthew finishes, and Will squeezes his eyes shut as the knife digs into his arm, creating a second, mirrored wound. He curls his fingers into fists as his blood trickles through them, and he knows the awful combined scent of metal and chlorine will haunt his senses for months to come—if he survives the ordeal at all, that is.
“How did you manage to bring us here?” Will asks, ignoring how his voice sounds a little strained, simply no longer willing to discuss himself.
Matthew grins up at him yet again. “They should have known better than to try and trap me in the one place I know inside and out.”
Will laughs, not even caring that he almost hangs himself in the process. “They put you right back in Baltimore State Hospital?”
Clearly glad they’re once again on the same page, Matthew nods. He then glances between each of Will’s wrists, something close to regret flashing in his eyes before he steps back, admiring the bigger picture, watching the blood snake past his feet.
Will can’t take his eyes off it either, wondering if they’ll have to drain the entire swimming pool if his blood were to reach it, just for health and safety purposes. He wonders if Hannibal would swim here even with his blood mixed into the water, then wonders exactly how much blood he’s lost for that to be his main line of questioning.
“They’d already arrived by the time he looked this drained,” Matthew says with a frown, breaking the silence.
Blinking the blurriness—and the implication that the FBI had cared far more about Hannibal than him—away, Will raises a questioning eyebrow. “You sound like you want to be arrested again.”
Matthew steps towards him, and both of Will’s wrists throb as he flinches. He can’t suppress his groan this time, not with the way the rope pulls against raw skin, and he struggles to refocus through the immediate blinding haze of pain.
“I share his desire to see you grow,” Matthew whispers, his voice all too close. Will, now only vaguely aware of his surroundings, flinches again, this time pulling his head back and promptly coughing against the unforgiving noose.
His fingers slide against one another as he tries to rub them together to calm himself down, and what was supposed to be a reassuring action throws his rationale into a frenzy. He can feel the numbness slowly taking over his limbs, no longer aware of where exactly they are in relation to one another, but still shivers when unfamiliar hands roughly grab his thighs, steadying him.
“I wanted him to see you like this,” Matthew whispers, still all too close, but Will can’t puzzle together his intentions, his eyelids fluttering shut.
He catches sight of his blood having reached and sliding into the pool just before the darkness takes over, and he thinks he hears the ringing of a phone, but that might just be his heart, and he wonders if anyone will stop Hannibal from swimming through his blood when he’s discovered, and he thinks he can hear his dogs barking frantically, though that might just be in his head, and, too tired and too drained to fight against something he can’t even feel anymore, he stops fighting and slips under the void just behind his eyelids.