All characters belong to Thomas Harris and Universal Studios. I'mvmaking no money out of this story.
Title: A Room in the Palace of Memory
Author: lemenya1
Pairing: Hannibal/Will
Rating: dunno, maybe PG-13?
Warning: This fic is unbetaed so watch out. Anyone who finds a mistake gets a candy and a hug. Seems there will be a lot of eating weets and hugging.
Author's Note: To understand this story, to "see" I should explain certain things. In my imagination the three books and also the films are one. I see Dr. Hannibal Lecter as he was portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins. I' m not able to imagine Will Graham without the wonderful play of Edward Norton.
This story plays after the film version of "Hannibal". "Red Dragon" and "Silence" happened in exactly the same way we all know it from the movies and the books. There is only one important difference: Molly and Josh died at the hands of Francis Dolarhyde.
Memory is something Hannibal Lecter handles in a masterful way. He is able to add new details to it again and again. His Palace of Memory is vast. There is no end to it. Every day he learns a little bit more how to rule it. He is not only able to keep every single
moment of his life in it, but he can also see those moments from different angles, he can put them together or get them apart.
But sometimes his mastery of ruling this instrument of his soul fails. There are rooms in his palace he can't enter. The ghost of Clarice Starling lives in one of them. Every time Hannibal goes past the door his steps are swift and fast. He doesn't stop. Though he
knows of the existence of that room he chooses to visit Clarice at a later time. Maybe he will never go in. Dr. Lecter is a psychiatrist and sometimes he smiles about the repression of his subconscious he sees here.
There are other rooms in Hannibal Lecter's palace. Their doors are dark and can't be seen when you pass them. They appear only when their time has come. On one of these doors a name can be read in golden letters: "Will Graham".
On one warm autumn night somewhere in South America Dr. Hannibal Lecter wakes up from a dream and in this exact moment the dark door starts to be visible. During the next hours of that night and the next few days the doctor finally enters the room which was long years guarded by his subconscious. Everywhere he looks he sees Will Graham's face. He starts to remember pieces of their conversations before and after his capture. He remembers the love to this man. His beauty and his wounded soul. And he sees again the moment Will drew his weapon in the middle of a turn. The rest of this path in the memory is written in blood, pain and loneliness. Lecter thinks about the way Will leaned his forehead against his shoulder while he struggled to win the battle against excruciating pain. How he hold onto him with his right hand. The memory of Will Graham is inseparable bound to the pictures of the Baltimore State for the Criminally Insane. Hannibal remembers the hate and disappointment he had felt in those days when Will visited him there. And he thinks about all those other feelings he had at night after the man was gone. He considered them weak.
Since the events leading to the death of the Tooth Fairy the time they spend together started to fade away. Clarice, the warrior helped him forget the room and the memory of his lover closed inside of it. But now the memories came back. In the next few weeks
Hannibal undertook a journey into his past. Between his job at the university and his sleeping time he searched for Will Graham in old American newspapers. Two years ago he escaped from Mason Verger's Farm. What happened after Dolarhyde's attack on the Graham family? Lecter only knew Molly and Josh died and Will was wounded badly
while trying to protect them. Lecter also knew Will survived. After that the traces stopped. Will never answered his last letter and the papers stopped speaking about the "Graham-Dolarhyde" affair, because the moster was dead and the hero was comatose. Even Hannibal's memories faded and for a couple of years the bright light of Clarice
Starling's presence illuminated Hannibal Lecter's palace.
In the next few weeks there's nothing but searching in his university free time. Between lectures and private lessons there's no time for anything else. Only Will. And again and again Will and the repeated question: Where are you? Old friends are helping Hannibal. They don't know his true infamous name. They try to help. Will Graham? Wasn't he that brilliant FBI Profiler who caught Hannibal the Cannibal? Mr. Graham is an old friend of yours? Sure I'll help you as good as I can! Afterwards it's easy and doesn't take much time and a name of a hospital for mental incurable appears. The wonderful invention called internet is the final step on the way to find Will Graham. There Dr. Lecter finds the beloved name but also the notes: closed ward, incurable ill, file closed and… diseased. The document shows the date of one week ago.
The last time Hannibal the Cannibal cried was when his sister Mischa was killed but now he's barely able to stop his tears. The question coming into his mind again and again is: Was this my fault? And a quiet voice answers him: Yes, you started the ball rolling.
The room with the golden inscription slowly begins to grow dark. The door starts to vanish, and some time later nothing indicates there was ever a door there.
The End
Afterthought: I have the strong feeling this story was better in german. My translation seems to be not exact. And there is a lot of mistakes *sights*. Please help me *puppy eyes*.