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Title: Blood on His Hands
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: writers_choice
Prompt: #91, Bloody
Author's Note: Sequel to "Brought To Justice."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

His hands were covered with blood.

Will raised those hands in front of him, staring at the blood, then looked down at the young girl gasping for air on the ground. He didn't know what to do to help her ....

His eyes flew open, and Will found himself staring up at the ceiling, the nightmare dissipating around him. It was a dream that he hadn't had in a while, a dream that brought Abigail back to vivid life -- that moment when he'd seen her father try to kill her.

He'd killed her father, instead. And even though she had told him that didn't make him her surrogate father, it had made him feel a grave responsibility towards her.

Now, thanks to Hannibal, she was gone. He knew exactly how he had been framed for her murder -- and he knew that he was lucky to have been exonerated of that crime, even though he also knew that there were some people who still believed him guilty.

Had it been Hannibal who'd put forth the evidence that had gotten him out? The other man would never say so outright, but Will was almost sure of that fact.

Still, that didn't get him off the hook for everything else that he'd done.

Hannibal had blood on his hands, just as Will had that fateful morning when he had rescued Abigail from her father's murderous intent.

Just thinking about that morning still made him wince. The blood on his hands had been so visceral, so .... red. He'd seen blood before, of course; he'd even had blood on him, but not that much. It had never covered his hands and arms in a mantle of red before.

He had almost felt Abigail's life slipping away, and he'd felt, at that point in time, that he would do anything, anything, to save that life.

She had been a young girl who deserved to live.

She didn't deserve to have her life ended so soon, especially not by an evil serial killer who had claimed to love her and supposedly wanted to take care of her.

And why had that life been ended? Will asked himself, blinking back tears. Because Hannibal had known that the authorities were getting too close to him, and he'd needed a patsy to frame for her murder. In the end, he hadn't cared about her at all.

She had merely been a means to an end, just as Will was. Nothing more than an experiment to be ended at whatever time Hannibal deemed appropriate.

No one deserved the kind of treatment the two of them had gotten from Hannibal.

Of course, Abigail had the worst end of it, Will thought with a sigh. She was dead, and there would always be people who believed that he had killed her.

Hannibal's frame-up job had been a good one, he thought bitterly. Who would guess that the monster had been evil enough to intubate him and push Abigail's severed ear into his stomach while he was in the throes of a seizure? It was too barbaric for words.

Yet he'd done it, and without a qualm. He'd sat there calmly and complacently in the courtroom while Will had been told that he would get the death penalty if he was found guilty.

Hannibal would have let him die for crimes that he hadn't committed. That wasn't the act of a friend, or of anyone who had anything but murderous intent in mind.

They'd never been friends. Hannibal had used him, manipulated him, and then had thrown him away like a toy that a child was tired of playing with. Will would never forgive him for that -- or for making him believe, even for a short while, that he'd had innocent blood on his hands.

That had been the hardest thing about all of this -- not truly knowing whether or not he might have actually killed Abigail.

And Hannibal had encouraged him to think that he had.

Hannibal had wanted him to believe that he was a killer, to doubt himself in the most horrible of ways. He'd never be able to forgive that monster for causing that kind of doubt. He would never be able to look at his former so-called "friend" in a benevolent way again.

Hannibal had tried to take everything from him -- including his life -- and had very nearly done so. He was the one who had blood on his hands.

More blood than just his, Will thought sourly. Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper, and he would prove it, somehow. He didn't know just how he'd be able to go about that, but he was formulating a plan in his mind. A plan that would require help.

If Jack would help him, then he could set that plan in motion.

It would be risky, of course -- but nothing that was worth doing ever came without some risk. He was more than willing to take those risks.

But if his plan worked, then he and Jack would trap the Chesapeake Ripper, and put him behind bars for good -- and Will would be completely exonerated, without any shadow of a doubt. No one would ever again think that he had murdered Abigail, or anyone else.

Of course, he would have to make Hannibal think that he was just that -- a killer -- for his plan to work. It was not only risky, it could end up proving fatal.

But if it did work, then any risk was worth taking.

Maybe, if he was lucky, then once their plan went through and Hannibal was finally behind bars, he wouldn't have problems sleeping any more. He hoped that was true.

He wanted the dreams where he saw Abigail with her throat slashed would disappear; the dreams where his hands were covered with the blood of an innocent, the dreams that made him awaken with his heart in his throat and the coppery scent of blood in his memory.

Will shuddered at the thought, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. He'd been covered in a thin sheen of sweat when he'd jolted awake, but now he was freezing.

He just wanted all of this to be over; the stress was already telling on him, and his plan had barely been formed, much less put into motion yet. He had a lot to get through, and he had no idea how long it would take for his revenge to be exacted.

There would be much more stress and strain in store for him before this was over. He had to be ready for it, had to be prepared to deal with all of that.

There was a good chance that he wouldn't even survive it.

Will pushed that thought away as quickly as it entered his mind. He had to survive, if only to see Hannibal punished for his crimes.

He wasn't going to let go of this life until that happened. He would chase Hannibal Lecter down to the ends of the earth if he had to, so that he could finally see what his soul craved -- Hannibal behind bars, robbed of his freedom, acknowledged as the criminal that he was.

And also acknowledged as a ruthless, heartless monster, who was nothing even approaching a human being. More than anything, that was what he wanted.

He wanted to see Hannibal's evil exposed to the world.

He wanted to see the world acknowledge that the blood was on Hannibal's hands, and not his own. That was the only thing that would give his soul peace.

That blood wasn't on his hands, in spite of these dreams that wouldn't go away. He'd been bloody because he was trying to help. Hannibal, however, was the complete opposite of the spectrum. The blood on his hands came from dealing out death.

Will closed his eyes, laying down again and staring up at the ceiling. It would be a long time before he could go back to sleep; he doubted that he'd be able to.

And if he did, then he knew that blood would follow him into his dreams.

***