Work Text:
Will doesn’t know why he answered when he heard his phone ring.
Realistically, he knows he shouldn’t be answering his phone at all, he probably shouldn’t even have it on him. He knows all the tricks the FBI uses to track suspects, and he figured he was more than just a suspect at this point. It’s difficult to walk without leaving some kind of footprint behind. Still, knowing all of this, he picks up the phone.
He doesn’t know why he stays on the line when all he hears is breathing on the other side.
Maybe it was fear because he knew whose breathing it was. He knew before he answered, he recognized the number because it had been sitting, neglected in his contacts since he got the phone. It was the only saved number without a name attached to it.
Faintly, he hears the muffled cries of lambs, quiet and broken up by the poor connection of the call. Though when he hears them they become all he can hear, and suddenly he’s not in the shared hotel room of him and Hannibal’s anymore. The palpable police sirens are no longer ringing in his head, and it’s only the lambs. Their screams are never-ending.
When he opens his eyes he sees the face of his father.
He's outside the farm he grew up on and he's standing by a fence next to his father. Will knows he looks different now but all he could see was the disapproving grimace he always saw as a child. He still has to look up to meet his father's eyes.
Silence between them stretches on as the lambs scream, and Will knows it's a challenge, so he decides to speak first.
“Hey, Dad.” His voice comes out shakier than he had hoped it would, and it didn’t feel like he had won. Even after all these years, he’s still afraid.
"I saw you on the news." He says, voice raspy and tired. He sounds worn.
“So you called to check if I was alive or not?”
“I called because I knew you were alive." He says "You’re hard to get rid of.” Will remembers hearing that sentence at ten years old in the bathroom of his childhood home. He was soaked and shivering, coughing up bathwater after he’d angered his father. His father was fixing his flannel collar after Will’s desperate claws at it, pulling himself out of the tub. That’s when he said it, before leaving the room and locking the door behind him.
Will can’t remember what he did to deserve that, all he knew is that he did nothing but obey afterword.
…
“Are you glad?” Will can’t help but asks, and he’s that little boy again, eyes as wet as the rest of him.
There’s no answer, only the lambs.