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Title: Not Just His Imagination
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Will Graham/Aiden Gillan
Fandom: Hannibal/Blood and Chocolate
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Will Graham or Lee Fallon, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Run. He had to run. He had to get away.

Aiden didn't dare look behind him as he ran through the forest, the low-hanging branches of trees tearing at his clothes, his feet slipping on the narrow path.

He wasn't sure of where he was. He only knew that he had to keep running until he found shelter, safety, and hopefully, someone who would take him in and listen to him.

More than that, he needed to find someone who would believe him. He had to find someone who would make the nightmares go away, someone who could keep him protected from what chased after him, from what had followed him here to the States from Romania, and wouldn't let him go.

It didn't matter that he'd relinquished what they thought he had taken, that he had recoiled in horror from it as he should have done from the first.

He'd thought that it would be enough to walk away, to turn his back on all of it. But no, his pursuers felt that the had to be made to suffer for making off with something they had wanted to keep.

Well, they had it back now. He wanted nothing to do with it.

He could hear something crashing through the underbrush after him; he didn't even want to guess at what it could be. He knew well enough what was following him.

What would he do if they caught up to him? His heart sped up at the thought; he knew that if he was caught, he wouldn't be alive to see the morning. It had been made clear that he was a dead man if his pursuers got their hands on him again; they would kill him without a second thought.

He couldn't let them catch him. He had to get away, had to find some kind of shelter. Not that shelter would save him, but it could give him an advantage.

Right now, he needed all the help he could get.

He didn't want to remember what had happened during the past hours when they had caught up to him. The bruises on his body, the pain each step cost him, was a brutal reminder.

All he wanted to do right now was collapse, find somewhere that had four sturdy walls and a door that could keep them out, keep them away from him while he rested.

But there was no rest, no slowing of the relentless pursuit. Aiden knew that he couldn't run for much longer; each breath burned in his throat, and his lungs felt as though they were ready to burst. Soon, he would have to stop moving, and then they would catch up to him .... and rip him to pieces.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that it had all really happened. It seemed like a dream, something directly out of his imagination, something that he would put into one of his graphic novels.

At one time, he might have thought that it was all a dream, a hallucination, that he had somehow fallen into a fever and conjured all of it up in his mind. It couldn't possibly be real.

No. It was real -- and that was the most frightening thing. The legends that he had studied, that a part of him had wanted to believe, were really true. There were werewolves. They did exist. And he had fallen right into a pack of them.

He'd even been foolish enough to think that he was in love with one of them. Though he should have known better. He should have realized where his sexual preferences really lay.

He hadn't been in love with that girl. He had been fascinated by the fact that she was a werewolf -- but he should have known that sooner or later, she would turn on him.

He had been a fool to trust her, or to think that she was a friend.

It was odd that the other werewolves had come after him when the two of them had broken up; after all, they had wanted him out of her life. They should have been happy that he was gone.

But no, that wasn't all that they'd wanted, he thought, wincing. They had wanted him dead, so he couldn't spread tales of what they were, and more importantly, where they were. So he had gotten out of Romania, come home to the States, and thought that he was safe.

That is, he'd thought everything was all right until four of them had cornered him in an alley outside of the hotel he was staying in. What had happened next, he didn't want to remember.

He had woken up somewhere out in the country, away from any safe haven.

Aiden didn't want to remember what had been done to him. He would think about it later, deal with it once he had caught his breath and found some safe place to hide.

Was there any safe place to keep himself protected from the horror that he was running from? At the moment, he wasn't so sure. He didn't think he would ever feel safe again.

He broke from the cover of the trees, startled to realize that there was a house ahead of him, only about fifty feet out of the forest. If he could reach that house .... if there was someone inside who would let him in, in spite of his disheveled appearance .... then he might stand a chance.

He stumbled forward, falling to his knees. This was it, he told himself, closing his eyes in defeat. So close, but yet so far. They would surely catch him now.

It took Aiden a moment to realize that he couldn't hear the sounds of pursuit any longer. There was no one following him. He was alone in the clearing in front of the small house.

Alone. But not safe. Never safe, not until they were dead and gone.

He couldn't run any further. He had to rest. And he was in a clearing, anyway. He would be in plain sight if he was still being pursued. There was nowhere else to run.

He could only go towards the house. If he could just make it to the front door, raise his hand to knock, and was able to convince whoever lived there to let him stay for the night, he would be all right. He just had to get out of the open, get to some place where he could be sheltered.

His head was spinning. This was all just his imagination. It had to be. It couldn't possibly be real.

But no. It was not just his imagination. The monsters were real, and they were after him.

Step by step, he managed to make it to the front porch of the house. One foot on the bottom step as he reached for the railing, then another, and another to get onto the porch ....

And then, without warning, Aiden's strength gave out, and he collapsed in an unconscious heap on the steps.

***