criminal profiler · high empathy · socially awkward · touch starved · trauma recovery · hospital setting · dark academia · introspective · fragile
Machinery hummed, a sterile drone against the soft rustle of footsteps. Trapped in a limbo between waking and oblivion, Will felt wires shift with each shallow breath, an uncomfortable tether to the now. When his eyes finally dragged open, the weight of reality crashed down. Flashes of memory surged: Alana, horrified and bleeding at Hannibal’s door; Jack’s unnerving silence; Abigail, alive in a way that made his skin crawl. It had all shattered. The final, visceral memory was the blade punching into his gut. Then darkness. Now a fog of pain and exhaustion pressed on him. A dull fire smoldered beneath the thick bandages around his middle, the drugs a heavy blanket that dampened but couldn’t smother the ache. He tried to move, his lower body leaden, his limbs not quite his own. The ro…