#raeality

Catcher is on his feet in an instant, rolling Hannibal onto his back and immediately sees the thick expanse of blood beneath Hannibal's shirt. His body seems cold, but it's winter and he's not really dressed for the weather. Hannibal still has a pulse but it's a fluttering thing. The longer Catcher looks at the blood, the queasier he feels. He glances up across his apartment to the phone.

He needs a doctor. He needs to call a doctor. He leaves Hannibal's side and picks up the phone and is told that he needs to get Hannibal to the hospital, but not only is the Colonel half a foot taller, he's much heavier too. As he is about to inquire about an ambulance coming to him, he hears a mumbling spluttering voice moan out, "No… no… no…"

So Catcher hangs up, locks the door, collects some tools and comes back to Hannibal's side. The big man has gotten paler and Catcher's field medic training in Panama seems a long time ago. Still, there must be a reason Hannibal came here instead of anywhere else. There must be a reason he doesn't want an ambulance. Maybe if he can get the man to talk to him, or at least examine the lug, he can figure out if Hannibal's wishes should be overruled. 

Then again, maybe Hannibal just wanted to bleed out on his carpet. With the way they left things, he wouldn't put it past the other man.

Carefully, unheeding of the blood on his trousers, Catcher props Hannibal up somewhat and gently pats his cheeks, getting nothing in reply. He slaps Hannibal harder, and the man gasps.

"Ow!" Then he grunts, a weak hand rising to try and press against the wound still hidden by the blood-sodden shirt. He lets out a long groan.

"What happened? What do you need me to do?" Catcher asks, long used to asking the right questions and being conservative when what he really wants to know is 'Where have you been?' and 'Why me?'

"Shot," Hannibal gasps out, his eyes already getting more heavy lidded again. "Too slow, these damn guns are no good… Need you to… stitch…" His voice gets considerably more slurred, his breath more labored.

"Right," Catcher said, suspecting as much, trying to grasp onto this direction firmly with both hands. "Right."

He yanks off his sweater — cashmere, but what does that matter now — and places it under Hannibal's head. He then uses scissors to cut open the shirt as close to the center of the blood as possible. He's wrong. He has to peel away inches and inches of damp, dark fabric, until he finds the oozing red center, the blood coagulating already.

"Why do I need to get the bullet out?" he asks, he can feel the tears in the back of his throat but is doing his best not to retch and that's a significant distraction.

"'S lead," Hannibal slurs. "Plastic would have been better… might have gone through… or killed me outright…"

Insanely, Hannibal chuckles breathlessly. He groans. His hand flops uselessly as he tries to raise it to his stomach once more.

"Please," Catcher says emphatically. "Please," he repeats in a whisper. "Don't move."

Catcher switches on the lamp he dragged over to the elevated foyer where Hannibal has landed, he picks up the forceps from the shallow bath of alcohol they've been sitting in, he blinks hard, sure that he's only a shade or two less pale than Hannibal. With the tools he has on hand, he does his best to open the small wound up and gently hunt for the bullet he's been told is in there. He wishes there was gunfire to distract him, other medics to assist him, or even just some casual promise from Hannibal he could cling to. But no, he has none of those things.

His forceps thud against something distinctly metal, a scraping sound juddering up his fingers — very different from bone, he remembers that much. He tries to grip the bullet right then, pulling the forceps open, and Hannibal hisses in pain.

"You sure you've done this before?" Hannibal asks, a smirk on his lips, apparently able to make salacious jokes at a time like this.

Catcher wants to scream.

"I need you to hold very still," he says instead.

"Just take it easy, baby," Hannibal slurs, his eyes dreamy, hands limp at his sides. "You shoulda told me it was your first time."

Catcher tries to ignore him, tries to ignore the anger and despair battling inside him. If Hannibal dies and this entire chapter of his life just ends, he doesn't know if he'll ever truly get over it. It's not really a choice, then.

He moves carefully and with precision, opening the forceps and angling them just so that he can grip the bullet. He moves slowly, aware that the Colonel is growing restless beneath his hands and growls, "Don't move." It doesn't seem to make a difference, all Hannibal is doing is breathing. Suddenly the bullet is out, the blood trapped behind it gushing out, but Catcher tosses the forceps aside, pressing gauze to the oozing wound and allowing himself only a second to breathe while he applies pressure to the wound. 

This is the less pretty part, but he knows it has to be done. The wound isn't very deep thankfully. If Hannibal had gone to a hospital, they probably would have already been done with him in the time it's taken Catcher to get this far. His needle is from the sewing kit he rarely uses, the thread is cotton, but Hannibal didn't really give him a choice. He swipes at the wound with alcohol and then presses the skin closed, Hannibal groaning as Catcher tries to just get through this.

"You didn't really give me a choice," Catcher says angrily as Hannibal grumbles about glue and grafts. "You should have gone to a hospital."

"Couldn't," Hannibal says grimacing. "Couldn't trust them."

"Worried they'd report you?" Catcher asks, journalist curiosity joining forces with his need for a distraction as he worked. He'd always been slow with a needle and thread, this is why he paid Paula and others to fix his clothes for him.

"Not exactly," Hannibal says, laughing dryly, just a rasp. He's clearly dehydrated with all the blood he's lost. He'll need juice and iron supplements. A blood transfusion would be ideal. "I wasn't sure about… bullets."

"What?" Catcher asks, focused solely on the movement of his needle before he ties it off and looks up. "I'm pretty sure they could handle a bullet."

"Well," Hannibal continues, voice somewhat garbled with how delirious he is. "Depends on the bullet… plastic on the x-ray… didn't think it was the nanites… but if there was a tracker…" He tried waving his hand but ended up just flopping it back and forth. "Couldn't risk it." 

"Who are the nanites— Nevermind," Catcher begins to ask, not making sense of any of it. "You sound like a science fiction program."

"Little robots," Hannibal says with a brief smile, his eyes dipping shut again.

"Little— hey! Stay with me!" Catcher reaches forward to pat a hand against Hannibal's cheek as his heartrate spiked. He needs Hannibal. "Tell me about the little robots or— or the tracker."

"Tracker's a device... that shows... where you are on a map, no matter where you go. Unless... you get deep enough... underground or if you're... in a dense... rain forest..."

Catcher resumes working, trying to make sense of what Hannibal was saying. The wound is no longer oozing blood as he finished, his fingers are stained pink, but he cuts the thread and sat back.

"So in a bunker," Catcher says.

Hannibal nods minutely.

"I need to wash you off and, preferably, get you to the bed."

Hannibal quirks a smile at that, but doesn't seem capable of his usual witty rejoinder.

"If I help you, think you can walk with me?"

While supporting his back, Catcher lifts Hannibal to sit upright, but the rush of blood from his head seems to be the final straw and the big man passes out.

Catcher scarcely gets a hand under his head before Hannibal is horizontal again.

"Fuck," Catcher says, slumping forward to hold his own head in his hands while the emotions he's been holding at bay finally sweep over him.

🌙

Thank you for reading!

So, this is just part one, I will be sharing part two as soon as it's done. If you want to check out the other stories with this pairing, they're on AO3 in the "Out of Time" series. Otherwise you can follow my fic log @dreaminghour-archive or subscribe on AO3 if you want to be notified.