Echoes of Yesterday

A long drawn out groan escaped Hannibal’s lips as he lifted his hands to his head which somehow throbbed even worse than before.

“If this is heaven, then I’m suing.” Hannibal weakly laughed to himself, but quickly remembered he was all alone, and no one would ever hear him, no one that mattered. Not his
Will. His Will was dead.

Tears pricked in the corners of Hannibal’s eyes and he let pitiful sobs wrack his body once more. His side screamed at him as his body jerked with every cry, and he grabbed his wound instinctively which only caused him more pain.

After a while, his cries faded into a dull ache, and Hannibal wondered how long he had been lying there. He had somehow managed to staple his wound closed before he had passed out, which was probably the only reason he was alive right now. Not that he was even sure he wanted to be.

Hannibal grumbled to himself, wincing in pain as he propped himself up against the sink counter and examined his mutilated body. His horrid tourniquet for his leg had worked, he wasn’t gonna have to lose his leg but he would never walk on it right again. As for his stomach, he was covered in massive bruises from head to toe but the wound would heal. He had stapled himself in a manner that would have suggested he had never used one before and it would scar horribly. He could live with that, he could live with almost anything. But he couldn’t live without Will beside him.

Hannibal could feel another round of sobs rising but he forced them to stay back. Crying was not going to help him and it sure as hell wasn’t gonna help Will. He slammed his hand against the cabinet angrily and rage took the place of tears. He was furious with everything and he just wanted to break something. Break anything.

He climbed to his feet, still incredibly unstable and unable to put weight on his leg, but this only made him more upset. He knew he shouldn’t exert any energy in his state but any bit of him still holding back vanished as he ripped his mirror off the wall and smashed it against the wall of the shower.

A hot, burning rage coursed through his veins as he made his way through what once would have been his paradise, destroying everything in his reach. Hannibal’s rampage left a trail of violence behind him, until he finally stumbled back and looked at the mess he had created. A smile crept onto his face and he let out a deranged laugh. What was happening to him? This is not how the respectable Dr. Hannibal Lecter should be acting, he should be civilized, respectable. Well he didn’t feel like Dr. Lecter anymore, whatever person he had been before, died with his Will. He was something much worse.

_____________________

A year had passed since the death of Will Graham, and the FBI still hadn’t captured Hannibal. He had been blamed for the murder of Will and was moved up to the #1 spot FBI’s most wanted list in both Europe and America.

They had found Will’s body almost a week after he had died, buried in a grave outside of his home in Wolf Trap, Virginia. His grave had a beautifully carved headstone and the ground around him was decorated in fresh flowers, and colorful fly fishing lures. Hannibal had brought him flowers to his grave everyday, and continued laying them on his porch even after the FBI had cleared everything away.

After Will had died, Hannibal snapped, he no longer cared about keeping up his appearance as The Chesapeake Ripper or creating art out of the bodies he had killed, he just wanted to kill something. Anything. He had gone on a killing spree, hoping it would make him feel better, hoping it would fill the massive emptiness inside of him. But nothing worked, no matter what he did, he felt awful. His wounds had healed terribly and life without Will was lonely.

Eventually, even the feeling he got when he killed someone faded, and his nights became occupied with drinking. He drank until he passed out, and the little sleep he got was filled with nightmares of Will’s mutilated body and he would wake up screaming, drenched in sweat and then drink until his pain went away.

During the days, he would research ways to bring someone back from the dead. He knew it was stupid to even spend his time like this but he didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t stop.

______________________

Hannibal groaned in pain as he lifted his head off his desk. He had passed out there last night researching something about time travel, and his head felt like it was going to explode with a massive hangover. Every inch of his body aches and his vision is blurry making it impossible to fully know where he was at first.

“Time… Travel? What the fuck was I on last night?” Hannibal shook his head in disbelief and tried to massage his temple. He didn’t know when he had started talking to himself
but he was already losing his mind anyway, so he didn’t care anymore.

“Mad scientist… intuition… blah blah blah… claims he created time travel…” Hannibal read, skimming through a page he had opened sometime last night on some Freddie Lounds journal entry. “Wow…”

Hannibal leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Something last night had made him want to try out time travel and he was desperate to do it, but why had he chosen this one?

“Couldn’t find someone a little easier to get to, Hannibal?” Hannibal muttered under his breath and pulled up a photo of an older looking man dressed in a mental institute’s prison issued jumpsuit.

Hannibal shook his head in disbelief. He was going to break this man out of a high security prison because he had the slightest bit of hope the man was telling the truth.

“Well, if he’s lying,” Hannibal smirked. “I’ll just kill him.”

He seemed to have made up his mind, and it had been so long since he had killed someone, this would be worth it even if it does end up failing. Hannibal’s headache seemed to disappear almost entirely as he focused on how he was planning on even pulling this off.

For the first time in months, Hannibal allowed himself to feel some hope. He didn’t know what this meant about his mental state and if he had finally cracked, but frankly he didn’t care. He was going to put everything he had into this last effort, whatever it’s result, he was no longer going to be in this miserable place.

Hannibal stood up from his desk and grabbed a few weapons scattered around his room, placing a gun in the back of his pants and made his way down to his car. His leg still hurt from his accident and he could no longer move as well as he had only a few years ago, and he was tired of it. He was tired of the constant pain, the never ending feeling of loneliness and he was tired of waiting. He lived only a few miles from the mental institute where the doctor was being held, and he figured now was as good a time as any to break him out.

Hannibal got into his car and drove off. He knew it wasn’t smart to be acting on impulse, with alcohol in his system but he pushed that thought out of his mind as soon as it had come. As he got closer to the institute, he pressed his foot down harder on the gas until it couldn’t go any faster. He was planning on driving his car straight through the side of the building.

He could see people running to get out of his way and he crashed through the parking lot and braced himself for impact. His car smashed through the side of the building with
more force then he thought possible. Shockwaves jolted through his body as the impact ripped him him his seat and tossed him through the front windshield.

Luckily for Hannibal, the windshield had been broken only moments before he flew through it and landed hard on the ground inside of the mental institute. He had no clue how he was alive or even able to move, but so much adrenaline and shock burned through his veins that he quickly picked himself up and limped down the row of prison cells until he reached one holding the man on his computer as alarm bells came on.

The man looked terrified and scrambled as far as he could in his cell away from Hannibal when he had pulled out a gun and fired it at the lock. Hannibal swung the door open and waved his hand at the man to follow him. He must have looked terrifying, standing covered in a mix of blood and glass waving a gun and demanding this man he didn't know to follow him because the man quickly obeyed.

“What kind of insane man breaks into a mental institute without a way out?” The man asked dumbfounded as he looked at the remains of Hannibal’s car.

“A desperate one.” Hannibal growled and pushed the man out of the hole his car had made. “Now, move, we have very little time.”

As soon as the last word had come out of his mouth, a guard burst through the doors and screamed at them to stop. The scientist man continued running in the direction
Hannibal had shoved him but turned around just in time to see Hannibal snapping the neck of the guard.

He froze in horror as he watched the guard crumple to the ground and tried to decide if he should run, but quickly decided against it as he saw Hannibal’s eye narrow at him like he had read his mind. This man was crazy enough to break into a prison and kill openly, he was not gonna do anything to make him upset.

“Keep moving!” Hannibal yelled at him and the man quickly obeyed. He ran until he was out of breath himself and stopped to look at Hannibal.

“We should stop for a second, I can see you're in pain.” The man suggested as Hannibal finally caught up to him, his limp much worse than before. “At least, let us keep walking
and you can tell me why you broke me out of that hell. I know it’s not because of my good looks.”

Hannibal nodded, and limped alongside the man but still stayed barely behind him in case he decided to put up a fight.

“Time travel, I need your help.” Hannibal said flatly as if it were a normal thing to say.

“Wait, you… believe me?” The man asked and stopped walking to face Hannibal. “No ones ever believed me-”

“Should I not?” Hannibal asked. “Because if your lying-”

“No! No, I am telling you the truth, I swear on my life.” The man blurted out. “But, if I may. Why do you believe me?”

“I need to. Everything rests on this working.” Hannibal says quietly as Will's face flashes across his mind.

“You lost someone…”

“Keep moving.” Hannibal says angrily and pushes the man forward.

“I can send you back to when they were alive, anything you want. I owe you my life. I was never getting out of that prison, the FBI was going to bury me there.” The man said, and he meant every word. He would help Hannibal with anything. “The FBI destroyed my first machine, but I have a second one hidden in a safe house that no one ever knew about. I can take you to it.”

Hannibal agreed, still unsure about the strange man but he was willing to do anything and fast because his adrenaline was wearing off and he was going to feel like hell.

“Hey, that’s not my car.” The man shouted as Hannibal broke the window of a small car and began trying to force start it.

“Not mine either.” Hannibal grinned as the engine turned on. “Now drive.”

The man quickly obeyed and crawled into the front seat as Hannibal sat down in the passenger side.

“You need to rest, the drive is a while from here and you should get your energy back for when we get there.” The man suggested, as he began to drive toward his safehouse.
“Relax, I wouldn’t do anything bad. You can trust me, I’m your friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.” Hannibal said coldly but still agreed and closed his eyes.

Sleep took hold of him the moment his eyes shut and time flew by. It felt like he had barely even slept by the time the man was tapping his shoulder to tell him they arrived.
Hannibal opened his eyes and the day had passed him by, the sky was already dark as he got out of the car and followed the man into a small shed looking building.

The man turned on the lights which revealed a large single room covered in machine parts, wires and a small spaceship looking thing in the middle of the room. Hannibal’s eyes widened in wonder as he looked around the space, examining the weird spaceship.

“Told you I had it,” The man grinned at him and typed something into his computer which turned the machine on.

“Well let’s hope this works.” Hannibal grinned back at the man, he felt alive with hope.

“Trust me, it works. You just need to tell me where you’d like to go and I’ll send you there as soon as these things are charged up.”

“I want to go back 1 year and 3 months. Before everything fell apart.” Hannibal said, more wishing it than actually believing it could ever be real. He closed his eyes and
imagined holding Will in his arms as he listened to the man who held all his trust typing away on his computer codes.

“Ok, we are all set. Climb into here please.” The man said excitedly, snapping Hannibal back to reality, and pointed to the machine which now had a door open on its side revealing a small chair.

Hannibal nodded and allowed the man to help him inside and strap the seatbelts in place around him.

“Now, I know we don’t even know each other's names but I do feel like I should tell you some things really quick, as a warning.” The man smiled at him as the door closed.
“First, once you leave this place, you can never come back. And second, this is gonna hurt worse than anything you’ve ever experienced. Good luck my friend, I hope you find what you are looking for.”

A wave of fear washed over Hannibal as the door locked into place, trapping him inside. He hadn’t fully thought any of this through. For all he knew the man could have just locked him into a weird furnace and plans to burn him alive or kill him with poisonous gas.

“Wait-” Hannibal tried to yell but he was cut off by the sudden feeling as he was moving at a million miles a second and a blinding light that seemed to grow ever more blinding.

Blood curdling cries rang out of Hannibal’s mouth as the feeling of all of his bones breaking at once and reorganizing ripped through his body. He could see things moving under his skin until his eyes went black and he couldn’t see anything. But he could still feel everything. It felt like years when suddenly the feeling of his weird machine impacting something solid nearly ripped him from his seat.

He could finally see again and his body no longer ached.

Without warning, the door popped open and his seatbelts all unlocked. Hannibal quickly scrambled out of the little machine, wanting to get as far away from it as possible but stopped when he saw he was no longer inside the little shed.

He was standing in the middle of a huge forest. Wherever he was, he was certain he was a long way from home.