#grey!will

Jared Freeman paced behind Dr. Lattic, and Will tracked where he supposed he'd wander if he was stuck in such an interview as this. That they'd presume to understand him, that they'd suppose they'd ever seen into a mind like his...

"Dreaming of what he did while you slept under the blue," Garrett Jacob Hobbs whispered, just beside the doctor's ear. He was a rat. "What did he do to you whenever blue lights made you sleep?"

"I can't say that your cooperation will ease your sentence, given the things you've done, but if we can make you come to terms with some of the things your troubled psyche made you do, there might be something we can do to ease your experience here," Dr. Lattic said, tilting his head. A different tactic.

"Fool's gold," Jared snarled.

"The things done to you," Garrett Jacob Hobbs corrected. "You only enjoyed hurting the ones that tried to hurt you first."

The bloodstains on Hobbs' shirt never came clean. Will dreamed of washing it in a cold stream of thought, but it never came clean because you can't wash away bullets once they've been fired, and he'd learned that the hard way. He wondered if Abigail would have helped, if the monster under the bed hadn't decided to eat her, too.

"Silence for another session, I see. Perhaps we should lower the dosage. Your eyes are unfocused, and I wonder where your thoughts are directed today."

He was wheeled through two security doors before he's dumped into his cell, the cuffs released from his hands and feet only after he's laid back onto the bed. It's degrading, but emotions are fog. He can't grip one enough to feel it, and he lays in the damp of the low-budget facility midst the screaming of one of the other inmates whose lunch wasn't delivered at the right moment pertaining to their OCD.

-

Will visited Wolf Trap National Park when the body could only fix so much of the house. Things had to be taken slow, no matter how much his mind raced. He wondered if the ideas had begun to fester yet, if Hannibal had taken his bait. 

He sat at the park and did as he often did, as he often had to do. It was a flat, open area with small spattering of oaks and sugar maples. Some Bradford Pears  lined to the right threatened to stink the entire place up soon. A few people walked, mostly young adults or the elderly with small children. The playground nearby entertained the children as their guardians gossiped and caught up on old news. The latest body found was suspected to be the second body in the new Chesapeake Ripper wave. Much of the gossip, it seemed, circulated that, from hands that gripped and folded the newspaper article to mouths that puckered and pulled. Hard to talk about death at a park. Things were cheerful, there.

He thought about calling Molly, but it seemed in poor taste to call someone just to waste their time. Dating was commitment, dating was honesty and vulnerability and hands clasped just to walk down the grocery aisle. Still, she'd smiled so brightly when she realized he wasn't trying to be condescending. She looked like the type to like dogs. 

He thought about time and hobbies and let his fingers idly scroll through his limited contacts on the phone. The Chesapeake Ripper probably wouldn't want him to date. Maybe he'd kill anyone that got too close to Will like he did last time. Maybe he wouldn't only until Will's guard was down.

It was the bird that caught his eye, even though he was supposed to be people-watching and letting the time pass. It limped along, not like the other birds around it that hopped for the worms bursting from the earth fresh from Spring rain. He stared for a moment, then another as it registered. When the bird tried to hop again, he stood from his lonely bench and slid his jacket off.

It was a male cardinal, bold and ruby red against the green. Its leg was bent oddly, and when it fluttered in panic at his approach, he stilled. "Easy," he murmured, and he wished it could be so easy as that. Say something, and it come true. Easy, and the bird was eased. Catch him, and the killer was caught.

He tossed the jacket and made the clumsy effort of scooping the bird up, all awkward elbows and quick hands. Its plaintive cries were muffled, and he straightened the arm of his jacket to try and give the bird some air flow. 

"H-hey, hey," someone called, and Will turned to see a small-statured man with narrow shoulders and an uneasy expression. He stood hesitantly on the sidewalk, and he gestured once he had Will's attention. "I saw the bird...are you gonna h-help him?"

"Do you know how to help him?" Will asked. "Or do you know someone that can?"

"I-I can help him," he said, and his face brightened.

"You can?" Will smiled, and the cries of the bird didn't bother so bad.

"Follow me, I can help the bird..." 

And just like that, Will found himself in the care of one of the stable hands that worked with the horses at the park. He managed to catch as much as they worked their way past the park, past the stables, and back towards a quaint white house whose trim matched the stables perfectly.

"Back here," he said, and the closer they got the brighter his face became. Behind the quaint white house sat a barn, and when Will ducked inside, he was greeted by the sound of dozens of birds, a disarming cacophony.

"Here, y-you can set him here." He gestured, and Will complied.

"Do you take care of all of these birds?" he asked, turning around. Now that the surprise of them wore off, their calls seemed more interwoven, less chaotic.

The man carefully unfolded the jacket and made quick work of securing the bird. "Yes." 

Will smiled. "What's your name?" 

"Peter." He glanced up, then away and smiled, his hold on the bird careful and gentle. 

"I'm Will. I'll let you work...can I see him when you're done?"

"Ye-yeah, just wait out there...I'll call you in, he'll be okay."

Will headed out of the barn and gave Peter his space to work. A bale of hay sufficed for a seat, and he listened to the trailing calls of the birds inside, each secured in their own cage. Chickadees, scrub jays, a pigeon, doves, robins; maybe a caretaker on the grounds. Will had made a point not to look at the dent in the back of his head when he'd followed him.

Bird casts were delicate things, and Peter Bernadone took delight in Will being fascinated by it. He was humbly surprised by the care Will took in waiting, and they sat outside of the barn for awhile. Will felt a gentle disposition in him, as well as a genuine kindness.

"I love the animals, they...they don't do harm."

"They can do harm," Will said, thinking of Winston. He hadn't done harm until Agent Crawford decided to find out just who his previous owners ha been.

"Not like us...n-not like humans," Peter disagreed, and he watched a horse in the corral just across from the barn. "Humans are the only...the o-only ones to intentionally do h-harm. Animals don't have that, but we do."

Will couldn't argue that. If the latest killing was the Chesapeake Ripper, that artist hadn't stabbed himself in the chest before removing the kidneys. At least the animals wouldn't have let it go to waste.

"Is that why you work with animals? Because they're better than people?"

Peter laughed and looked down at the cage where the cardinal rested. The small cast dwarfed his stick-thin leg, but he'd assured Will it would heal. "Gotta p-protect them from people."

"We also have to protect people from people," said Will. "I think you're onto something.

He left the park a little while later, but only after asking Peter if it was okay if he came back.

-

The news could be savage when it wanted to be. When it couldn't speculate farther on the latest killing to hit DC, it ruminated on the infamous Will Graham and how he was now alive and well and on the roam. Was he truly innocent, or an acolyte, the news wondered? Could he return to his life after four years of incarceration? Would he begin to amass a wealth of death to rival the Ripper's before the jury was out?

Insomnia was a bitch. When he dreamed, he dwelled on the shadows filling the hollows of Hannibal's cheeks. Awake, he lay in a half-coherent doze on the couch and let the TV drone, anything to keep him from thinking too much. He was tired, but not tired enough. The news speculated on his absence from any media outlet. A month free, and the victim wasn't ready to start talking yet. If he started getting cold calls, he'd have to change his phone number. He wanted his story to be as old and stagnant as a standard traffic stop.

Work was easy, mindless, and the house was looking great. University classes for credits were pending, and should he get accepted he'd be allowed to swing right into a summer semester and begin getting his degree. A GED in the cell wasn't as impressive as a diploma across a high school stage, but he'd take what he could get, should they let him in. At the end of the day, bosses just wanted to see a degree. How you got it was irrelevant.

"--membered, displayed, I mean, if we analyze this realistically then the only indication that it could be the Chesapeake Ripper is because their kidneys are missing!"

"So you're saying that you don't think it's the Chesapeake Ripper's latest kill?" the newscaster asked.

Their interviewee fluffed their coif lightly. "I'm just saying that it's a bit presumptuous this early to say. It could be, but normally this form of psychopath is a tad more...violent in his attack. A single stab wound?"

"A single shot," Will corrected her in the otherwise quiet living room. As if he could have stopped at one, should he have decided to pull the trigger.

"The kidneys are a tell-tale sign, though. Our analyst, Brice Hoey, can confirm that there are currently no other known serial killers in the area that take organs as trophies."

"It's too early to tell," their guest pressed, and they shook their head. "If there was more information on the crime scene, we could confirm if the Chesapeake Ripper's other calling signs are there, but until the next report is released, I can't put my stamp on the case."

"We could always ask Will Graham," the newswoman joked.

"I think any information from him would have to be verified before it could be taken as fact," they replied. "Encephalitis is a serious illness, and coupled with the other traumatic things that happened to him at a young age, it's difficult to say if we can trust--"

Whenever the topics steered towards his mental state, Will would find it in himself to let the silence of the house keep him company, instead. The expanse of it yawned, and there were no repairs to be easily made. He needed a distraction.

-

Maybe that's why Will found himself pouring two cups of coffee one Friday morning a week or so later instead of one. Part time ensured he'd have time for some classes before Summer arrived and let him begin college in earnest. Hobbies. Busy hands. He'd called Molly and had the brutal pain of leaving a voicemail. All that courage, wasted in the face of a busy schedule. He'd stammered once before hanging up. Likely she'd been watching the news, too.

"You won't return my calls," Jack said, accepting the cup. 

They sat out on the porch while Winston trotted about the yard, sniffing through the hesitant grass. Spring was trying its best in Wolf Trap.

"I won't," Will agreed, sitting down in the chair next to his. He'd re-stained them one evening, and they looked better than new.

"Have you watched the news recently?"

"I have," said Will.

"Then you know there's another body."

Winston was older, and it was apparent in how he didn't wander too long before trotting to Will and laying down at his feet. What was he, seven or eight? Will reached down and rubbed his ears affectionately.

"That's a nice dog you've got there, Will," Jack tried again.

"Same dog as the one you branded me a killer for," Will said curtly. Then, throwing somewhat of a bone, "he's a good dog. I didn't expect him to remember me."

Discomfort sat stupid between them for a time, each one sipping their coffee with grimaces. It was uncertain if it was the strong coffee or the silence that made it bitter. Will knew exactly what Jack wanted, only it was the very thing he didn't want to give. He had busy hands, only they didn't want to be busy with something like Jack and his manipulations. His mind was trying to confuse the two, though. It reasoned how much it wanted to do already.

"You see this person the way no one else does," Jack tried for a third time.

"I just interpret what I see in front of me."

"So just interpret something for me."

"Am I the only poor bastard you could corner on such short notice?" Will wondered incredulously. "Seriously."

"Who else would I ask?"

"Specialists, therapists, hell; ask Alana Bloom."

"I have gone to specialists, detectives, therapists, doctors, and every behavioral analyst known to hell and creation. None of them see him like you do. None of them saw the others like you did, Will. Otherwise I'd have never used you." There was a catch in his voice, something that seemed to surprise even Jack. "I'd have...never asked you to look if I didn't think you were saving lives."

"You think maybe I see him like no one else because I've spent the night at his house?" Will wondered. Ever thought it was because I've fucked him?

Jack ground his teeth. "I think it's because you look at things from a perspective uniquely yours. I think you pay the price for it, but you do it."

"And don't you wonder if I ever get tired of seeing things that way?" he asked, ashamed at how his own voice betrayed him. "Maybe I'd just like a simple life where I don't have to feel that way all the time. Shouldn't you care about something like that?"

"He's hurting people, Will," Jack needled, and it's there that Will was forced to feel the sunburn ache of Jack's guilt. "The longer I take to find him, the more people he hurts."

Winston made another round in the yard, and Will watched him halfheartedly chase a bird. "I'm not leaving this porch," he said. "And I don't want to see pictures, either."

Jack snatched the bone offered. "Okay."

He set his empty cup down and left Will to his own drink, the grounds fine enough some had seeped through the filter. He wasn't too experienced with making coffee, but he was trying. Learning adulthood was one step at a time and one Google search with each failure. He hadn't had a lot of people-watching in the hospital. He didn't have a lot to go on when he was learning how to get the stains out of a white t-shirt or timing the coffee grinder to keep the beans from turning to dust.

"The body was found in their workshop," Jack said, and he looked out across the field. Will wondered what memories Jack held of this place in comparison to his own. Ones no uglier, that was certain. "The victim is an artist, Sebastian Bibee, displayed in front of his work station. A young artist, one up-and-coming. No criminal history apart from one minor-in-possession."

Will thought about it; the news hadn't gone much into detail on how he was displayed. He was glad he'd had the thought to forbid pictures. Pictures would have made him see, and he didn't want to see Hannibal's wrath after being threatened in his own home by something so artlessly tasteless as a gun. "How was he displayed?"

"A single stab wound to the chest and a small surgical incision in the back. He took the kidneys."

"How do you know it's the Chesapeake Ripper, then?" Will asked dubiously. 

"That's what I'm talking to you for. The media's looking for answers, but I won't give them one until I know for sure."

Will stood up and took Jack's empty cup, using that as an opportunity to think as he went through the motions of making another one. When he set it down, he leaned against the post on the porch and frowned, cramming his hands into his pockets. 

"Could have been someone harvesting organs," he said slowly. He thought of one of the late night guest speakers on the news. "Normally they leave them alive, though, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Could've gone wrong."

"The painting on the easel was Jael and Sisera," he said, and his expression sobered as he looked Will over. "Does that mean something to you?"

"Should it mean something to me?" 

"I'd show you a picture if I thought it'd help," he offered.

"I'll look it up later," he promised.

Jack looked out over the field, and if his memories of those awful days haunted him, it didn't show on his face. Only time did. Time, and a bitter sense of wounded pride. Will wondered how much crow he'd had to eat when the time came that he'd realized Will wasn't the killer. A dark part of him wished he'd lost his job over it, but the FBI takes care of their own. The good old boys club, and Jack was just trying to be a good, old boy.

"It's a bible story," he explained. "Jael promises aid to a defeated Canaanite leader, Sisera, and while he sleeps she drives a peg through his head. One of my guys said it's pretty symbolic."

"Pretty something," Will grimaced. 

"You think you're in danger, saying it's him?"

"No," Will lied, only it was the kind of lie he'd practiced in the hospital, the kind orderlies didn't think to look for. "I'm not the only thing that revolves around this guy, Jack. He was killing long before me, and he'll kill long after if he's not caught."

"I don't think that's necessarily the case," Jack argued.

"Who says he's not threatening to kill you? Lull you into a sense of security, then drive a peg through your head just when you think you're getting close."

It was like being at the crime scenes again, only Will wasn't eighteen and sick and terrified and naive. Age didn't feel like wisdom, but it made it easier to talk back to Jack, to pick up his ebb and flow of speech and accidentally mimic it. He wondered what they'd done with the FBI jacket he'd used to tote around--likely rotting in an evidence locker somewhere.

Jack scowled, and he sat on that for a bit. "...What's that mean for the body?" he asked the coffee mug.

"Fuck all about the body, it's just another tool to him. Humans are tools to him."

Winston trotted back once more and laid down.

"Who's he trying to direct it at, then," Jack mused. "Me or you?"

"I bet he's hoping you ask me that, and you did." Will grinned. "What's that say about you, Jack?"

Jack stewed on that, and he didn't finish his second cup of coffee. They watched the breeze tease small shoots of tall grass out in the field. 

"How's he choosing them?" Will murmured, more to himself than Jack. 

"Don't you know?"

"If I knew, I'd have found him a long time ago." Will chewed on his thumb, stewing. Some symbolic, some close, some far away and strangers. "I wonder what connects them."

"We're looking for connections, but apart from the ones that all had relationships with you they don't have any correlation. Seemingly random, even before you came along."

Will had nothing for that. He thought about the artist, and he resisted the urge to ask for a photo.

When Jack left, he didn't promise not to call, but he didn't say they'd be in touch soon either. Will took it as a bit of a win, and he went back to mend a bit of fence he'd noticed needed repair while they talked.

Will looked up Jael and Sisera on his phone long after Jack left, and he stared at it for awhile, thinking. Thoughts leapt like the fish in the river back behind the house, plentiful and  distracting, and he supposed that if it was the Chesapeake Ripper's response to Will pointing a gun at him, it was time that he toss the line in again. He had a fish ready to bite.

Jael, knelt, poised, her lap the pillow Sisera lay his head to sleep. The expression on her face was not violent as she pressed the nail to his ear. For a moment, he saw it much like her carving thoughts, ideas, beliefs into him. He blinked, and the hammer just above would surely strike too hard to be of any aid once she had finished crafting his mind. Surely the mallet would strike, and her creation would be obliterated? Surely everything would be destroyed in the aftermath of her actions?

An artist recreating it, only they were interrupted. Had he finished the painting? Was Sebastian stopped halfway, a single stab wound to the chest the only thing keeping him from finishing his work? Jael's mallet never striking the nail, dust never again beaten from the marble. Frozen on the canvas, she looked to Will much like Hannibal, carving secret things into whatever dark crevices he could find. Had Will killed him that night, would Hannibal's creation have been considered finished? Or would Jael's hammer have fallen and taken Sisera with her in the end?

Naturally, at his light suggestion ten miles into the drive that she lay back down and get some more shut-eye, she sat ramrod straight with legs criss-crossed in the middle of the back seat. Each time he glanced into the rearview mirror, he found her staring back. He hadn't spoken during much of their time since leaving the Great Red Dragon to his meal. After her reassurance that the injuries from the wreck were superficial at best, she'd remained quiet with her back to him on the spongy and suspiciously damp bed. From there she'd fallen to an exhausted sleep. If she hurts, she makes no comment. Only watches.

Hannibal sits with far more ease. He's content in the passenger seat to watch electric poles swing by in rapid fashion, the snow whipping by and blinding with each random flash of car lights in the distance. Will wonders if he'd slipped back around to grab the linoleum knife in order to get his revenge when Will least expects it.

I'm fond of you. Can you see?

Will envies his ease. Since he'd driven away from what had almost become his final resting place, ants marched along his skin and left vengeful rashes. Red Dragon with walls as high as mountains, Dolarhyde's decimated in his need to be Seen.

Pressed between the cold and the vending machines, Will had felt something powerful in how he'd been able to finally, finally see through Hannibal so easily, and yet...

Now, in the cramped space of the car, Will finds that he desperately wants to run. Run and run and run until his legs give out. He wouldn't get far; Will's pretty quite sure he couldn't get much more than a mile before falling into a ditch and letting the cold take him like Purnell likely will.

Will had let her do that. He'd shut his eyes and let her walk into the frigid night to die alone. Wandering the halls of his own mind palace, opening doors and peeking behind curtains, he's not quite sure if he can find the guilt he should be feeling right now. His body aches something awful, and bruises from the seatbelt  had already formed in a striped fashion across his chest and neck. Small cuts had dotted his shirt a suspicious pink where the belt broke skin. He hadn't noticed until taking a quick shower.

"So many questions you must have to remain so silent," Hannibal observes once they find their way to the interstate.

Plows had long already gone through to pave the way, semis keeping most of the falling snow at bay in the aftermath. Giants alongside their lone, nondescript car. He imagined each one as sentinel as they passed by.

"He's waiting for me to fall asleep-" Abigail says sweetly.

"Abigail-"

"I don't mind her hearing what I have to say," Hannibal assures him lightly, as though that's the only thing tying Will's lips into a knot. He looks away from the window, and Will avoids his stare.

"Why are you going on the run with us?" Abigail asks when Will still can't speak. "No one could have ever figured you out."

"You knew?" Will asks, stunned.

He currently sat in the only room not bugged by the warden’s microphones, staring at the hands of a gristly, aged FBI agent. There was no polite ceremony to his visit. They knew each other well enough that pleasantries died when Jack Crawford first accused him of a murder that Will most certainly had not committed –several, in fact.

“Are you listening?”

“Vaguely,” said Will. A lie, but he’d become pretty good at those.

“Vaguely,” Jack repeated, awed. Before Will could tack something on, he tossed the file down for Will to see. “Read for yourself, then.”

Will glanced down nonchalantly. “I see what it says. I guess I’m just processing what it means for me exactly, is all.”

“What it means?”

“I mean, it says here the Chesapeake Ripper’s been at large for the last four years. Says here he’s actually been killing for awhile before that.” Will pushed the file folder back to Jack and crossed his arms.

"Yeah."

"Says there's evidence showing there was no copycat to Garrett Jacob Hobbs, just the Chesapeake Ripper."

Jack gestured and nodded. “So?”

“So?”

“I’m saying you’re innocent, Will.”

Will smiled. “Shit, Jack, but I already knew that."

“We made a mistake,” Jack replied, and it was obvious in the lines of his face that he’d been forced to eat crow. A whole lot of it. “One that the FBI does not take lightly. We contacted your lawyer, and a negotiation of wrongful imprisonment reimbursement was reached.” He slid a crisp, bland check over to him, scritching along the file folder. Will scratched the whiskers on his cheek thoughtfully.

His lawyer had called the night before, so he'd had time to mull it over. He lets it sit in a puddle of discontent on the table. “Two hundred thousand is pretty high dollar,” he finally said thoughtfully.

“Considering the specifics of the situation—"

“—My sickness the perfect excuse to not participate in any real detective work—"

“—it wasn’t difficult to convince us to offer the maximum amount,” Jack finished.

Will looked to his eyes, then to his mouth. “Is it that difficult for you to realize you should have listened to me?” he asked.

“Is it still that difficult for you to look people in the eye?” Jack retorted.

Will forced himself to look into his eyes. “I already know what I’ll see when I look into your eyes, Jack,” he said, “I'm sick of looking in eyes like that.”

“The evidence—"

“Was gift wrapped with a neat bow on top for you to keep as a souvenir,” Will cut him off. “So easy that you didn’t think to question whether or not it was really that simple to catch someone supposedly so smart you’d recruited an eighteen-year-old to tag along to horrific crime scenes. Easy as pie.” He folded his arms and dragged his thumb over his bottom lip, thinking. Temper, temper. Try again. Finally, “I’ll take your money. Four years in this place will ensure that I take anything I can from you.”

Jack’s lips puckered, but the papers were produced. Will took the stack and signed each specified place, gaze occasionally cutting to the check that rested at his elbow. Two-hundred thousand was indeed the highest he’d ever heard of, the closest being Inmate 2361-B who’d been imprisoned for allegedly killing his brothers. Three years got him one-hundred thousand dollars, but it also got him a bullet to the head a week after his release when he couldn’t adjust to civilian life and decided that eating a gun was better.

Paperwork done, Jack placed everything in a neat stack and seemed to hesitate. Will studied the clock overhead. 2:13 P.M.

“This killer that framed you—"

“Not interested.”

“He’s killed at least fifteen people, and we could really use your insight.”

“I don’t care,” Will snapped. “You know who I said did this to me.”

“Not that tired old drum about Hannibal-”

“Where you’re not inclined to hear me out, I’m not inclined to give a singular shit about your inability to catch a serial killer.”

“We did investigate him, Will! We found nothing!”

“Only because he’s smarter than you.”

They glared at one another from across the table, and Jack nodded reluctantly. “This killer is, yes. I need you to at least look.”

“I don’t care about your problems.” A beat. “And I don’t want to look.”

“No, but the Will Graham I know wouldn’t want to see so many people get hurt, even if it meant that you got to see me flounder in the process,” Jack said.

Will rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, and he sighed. “The Will Graham you claimed to know was, in your eyes, a psychotic killer,” he said conversationally.

“At the very least, help me because you could become a target if he wants to go after you again,” Jack prodded, not rising to the bait.

“My struggles are old and overused to him. I’ve become a boring study as of late, so it furthers him nothing to continue to try and ruin my life,” said Will with a non-committed shrug. “That’s the only thing you’ll get from me. Free advice, too: you’re no match for him, Jack. Let someone else take the case while I get back to my life.”

“Your life’s not—"

“FOUR years, Jack,” Will snarled, and something in his tone startled Jack enough that he didn’t interrupt. “Don’t you dare try to soften that.” He paused, waited long enough to get control of his voice. Temper, temper. “I don’t…I don’t want to help you.”

“It’s not about me, it’s about the innocent people,” Jack argued.

“At this point, I don’t care about them, either,” Will lied. It was a good lie, though, the kind that slid smooth off of the tongue like oil. “When can I leave?”

“Today,” Jack said, and he looked to the small window in the corner, just big enough to be legal. “They’re already processing your things for release. I took it on a hunch you'd say yes.”

Will heard the lock in the door turning, and he stood, studying Jack out of the corner of his eye. It was something he’d had to learn to do, and he’d become as good at that as he has at lying. “If you’re trying to imagine four years here, Jack, I’d not recommend it.”

“Oh?” Jack turned, likely ready for another fight.

Will stepped out when the door opened for him, and he smiled grimly. “You’re an FBI agent. They’d have slit your throat a week in.”

When Will returned to his cell, he found his things –what little he had in his cell that could be claimed as his –put neatly into a small vinyl duffle bag, the hospital’s logo emblazoned on the side. Clearly this was something that’d been in the works long before he’d ever been consulted.

He wasn’t handcuffed, and he walked down the endless grey walls without the metal biting his wrists for the first time in his entire life. The guard that walked beside him wasn’t friendly, but he made no move to stop Will when his pace quickened. He swore he heard whispers, hisses, other inmates calling out, and it nipped at his heels, threatening to trip him until at last the thick, barred doors shut with a definitive THUD.

A familiar face met him at the small space between worlds, where the check-in blocked both the entry to the institute and the exit to the real world. He’d been allowed to change out of the jumpsuit, a simple pair of sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt his only other clothing, and he was relieved when she threw her arms around him that they’d been recently laundered. He dropped his duffle bag to hug her back, only a beat too late. It’d been a long time since he’d been embraced like that.

“Look at you,” Alana breathed, letting go of him. Four years hadn’t changed her, although it could be said that was because Will had witnessed those four years. Her raven hair was still swept back in loose waves, and her blue eyes still froze whatever they set their gaze on. She smiled, and he felt his own lips twitch in response, a tingling sensation rippling over his skin.

“Look at you,” he replied. He tugged loosely on his shirt, and he grinned. “They said that I could keep one item as a souvenir.”

“A good choice, Mr. Graham,” Alana stated, studying it. “I’d have done the same.”

“Are you off so soon, Mr. Graham? I’d have thought you wanted an exit interview.”

Will couldn’t help the small, tense knot of unease. “I don’t,” he said, curt.

Frederick Chilton laughed as he reached them, although it wasn’t quite humorous enough to be real. “I found the timing of your release interesting,” he said, gesturing to Alana. “I must admit, I was a little upset that I only found out ten minutes before you did that it would be occurring.”

“I think you know me well enough to know that nothing that happens is coincidence,” Will replied. Frederick opened his mouth to reply, but at the expression on Will’s face, it snapped shut.

“Congratulations on your promotion, Frederick,” Alana said from around Will. She moved around him to shake Chilton’s hand, and her offer was returned after a beat.

“It was a surprise to me, truly,” Chilton said with faux-modesty.

“The last Head Administrator was lobotomized,” Will informed Alana. “No one wanted the job after that. He was the only one with credentials that applied.”

“Yes, well, I met all of the criteria, and they were more than happy to offer the position to me. If you’re looking, Bloom, I can set you up with a wonderful residency here,” Chilton offered coyly.

“I have a good residency, but thank you,” Alana said with an amiable laugh. “Will, should we go?”

“Oh, yes, you should,” Chilton stated, laughing at a joke only he knew. “Whoever the killer is that framed you, you must find yourself inherently indebted to him for deciding to let you go free.”

“Goodbye, Frederick,” Alana said curtly, and she led Will towards the exit before he could reply with something nasty.

It was spring in the real world, sunlight rippling through maple leaves, and when Will’s shoes touched the concrete outside, he stopped at the steps and stared, eyes hungrily consuming everything in sight. Baltimore, Maryland wasn’t exactly home, but the trees were green, the flowers bloomed, and the air positively reeked with growth and birth and all those happy, renewing things. He inhaled deeply, savoring it.

“What do you think?” Alana asked.

"I'm hungry," he said, taking a step. No guard burst through the doors to detain him. No orderly found just the right spot to sink a needle and send him into a dizzying sleep. He hurried down the steps, pace quickening.

“What are you feeling?”

“Burgers,” he replied. Then, dryly, "glad to see the car hasn't changed."

"Hey, student loans before cars," she laughed, and they climbed in.

His bank assured him that four years had grown his account by exactly a penny and a half. Not surprising. Will drummed his fingers on his leg and was quick to leave after the check cleared, mingling by the mildly spindly maples struggling to grow in the indirect sunlight. Sunlight by the trees felt nice.

“Whoa,” Alana laughed, following him out, “no need to rush. They aren’t going to take it back, Will, I promise.”

“Right,” he said, and it took him a second to really register what she was saying. He laughed, a curt sort of noise that startled a woman walking by. “…Right.”

He waited outside of the burger place, loitering beside a table with an umbrella, and when Alana walked out he sat himself down with his back to the building, watching everyone on the street. His gaze flicked from teen to child to angry, middle-aged man, fingers plucking at his steak fries. He was hungry, but there was a different sort of hunger that took precedent, the kind that made him note hand gestures and tone, smiles that were quick and lingered. The only people he’d been able to observe for the past while had been guards, orderlies, and inmates, and those were the worst sort of people to see in a miserable, dreary, everyday setting. Miss Avery would have cautioned him that those were not the people one wanted to imitate and reflect.

“How are you processing everything?” Alana asked as she added ketchup to the burger. Will grabbed a fry and stuffed the entire thing into his mouth, sitting up to get his burger unwrapped.

“It’s very real,” he said, hands grazing over a bun that didn’t feel like it’d been baked at twelve thousand degrees before being dropped on something cold and left. “But it very well could be a dream. I could still wake up on that cot tomorrow.”

“It’s not a dream,” Alana assured him. “I was there when Agent Crawford met with the lawyer, and we discussed a few things before it was approved and he went to meet with you.”

"Jack didn't know I already knew." Will grinned. He'd enjoyed watching Jack dish out what he already knew was coming.

"I told him no matter what he did he was to get you out as soon as possible," said Alana.

“That’s a relief,” Will said. “I don’t think I’d manage another round.” And that was a lie, but it was the kind she’d allow him to have. If there was one thing Will had learned about himself, it was that no matter what seemed to happen to him, he woke up the next day –not necessarily stronger, but angrier. More resilient.

He took a bite of the burger, and yes; just what he thought. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. He chewed slowly and swallowed, savoring every moment.

“Do you have plans?” she asked.

“Get my phone turned on, call my dad, get my things, get a car, get a place, get a job.” Will ticked off the items on his fingers, grabbing another fry.

“Does…Hannibal fall into your plans?”

Will made a face. “Why would he?”

“Jack tells me you’re still convinced he framed you for everything,” she said tentatively.

“Yeah, but I don’t know what Jack’s playing at either, telling you that. He says a lot,” Will replied with a shrug.

“You think Jack is...playing with you?”

“This whole thing could be Jack’s idea. He could try and use you to convince me to help him suss out his killer.” Will shrugged, taking another large bite, uncaring of the use of too much mustard and not enough tomato. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d even had a tomato, let alone a meal that hadn’t come pre-packaged.

On second thought, he could remember, and he didn’t want to.

“You think so?”

Will finally braved a glance to her face, and the tone matched the facial expression. Her displeasure and disbelief were matched only by her reluctance to intentionally hurt him.

“No. I think Hannibal finally got bored with me, and sooner or later he was going to have to take credit for his work.” A beat as Will mulled something over. “Is that what they call him since they refuse to use his real name? Chesapeake Ripper?” He glanced over to a mild argument a couple was having at the farthest table, partially to note how she flipped her hair when she was indignant, and partially to avoid Alana’s disapproving expression.

“Leave it to you to still accuse the only man that stood by your side during the trial and believed your innocence,” she replied dryly.

“I don’t think any of you understand just how much he enjoys toying around with people,” Will said with pseudo-pleasantness. He took another bite, looking away from the couple to study Alana’s hands. They’d forgone handling her food in order to maintain business.

“He was trying to help you, Will.”

“He wanted his thesis to be new, bold, and innovative, and if he got to crawl into the head of some messed up kid that was too stupid to realize he was being manipulated, then so much the better,” Will snapped. “Which, by the way, I read his thesis; Dr. Chilton ensured I had access to see just how much Hannibal profited off of everything that happened to me.”

“Then you’ll have also read that he urges others to look for the necessary signs in order to prevent what happened to you to happen to anyone else,” she retorted.

“Yes, if the great Hannibal Lecter can’t cure the encephalitis, no one else should try,” Will said sarcastically. “I got to read a lot about psychology in the hospital, since everyone at first was convinced that I was an intelligent psychopath. He uses forms of coercion and persuasion to get what he wants, all the while his hands stay clean.”

“You’re not an intelligent psychopath,” Alana said pointedly. “Your presence here should show you that none of us think that.”

“The evidence shows me the Chesapeake Ripper finally decided that he wasn’t having fun anymore, so he needed to change things up a bit. Now he gets to take credit for his work, and judging by the desperation in Jack Crawford’s tone, I can assume he can continue toying with Jack a bit more. If he’s going to Hannibal to ask for help next, the Chesapeake Ripper won’t have to go far to get his kicks –the FBI will take the fun right to him.”

“He still asks about you, Will. Even after everything you’ve said, he still worries about-”

“My well-being, and do I eat, sleep, bathe, shave, read, and just generally take care of myself because sometimes at night he wakes up with such paternal thoughts in his head he can’t help by drop by the next day to make sure everything’s alright,” Will interrupted.

“Then why-”

“Because I know him better than any of you, and I see exactly what lies behind that artfully constructed veneer of calm, collected concern,” he replied. “And let me be honest, Alana, behind that careful construction is an intelligent psychopath that took away some of the few people in my life that I care about, and when I was able to piece it all together, he framed me for it.”

“He hasn’t taken me,” Alana observed, tilting her head. In that moment, he saw her as more of his therapist than his friend. “In your skewed perception of him, why is that?”

“You’re useful,” he said, swallowing with difficulty. “And you’re better off blind to him than dead.”

She pursed her lips, and maybe it was the way that she bowed to the meal for a moment that gave it away. Halfway through her burger, she set it down. “I’m dating Hannibal, Will,” she admitted at last.

He blinked, stunned. Another bite, then a douse of soda to wash down the bitter taste of disappointment masking fear. “…I see.” He nodded, feigned contemplation. He couldn't quite look past her chin. “And when should I expect the announcement in the mail?”

“Stop,” Alana warned.

Will laughed bitterly, plucking at the bun. “No, no, congratulations,” he praised, waving a hand dismissively. “I mean, really, I’m just…happy for you.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he agreed, and he drummed his fingers on the table, needing to expel the anger that threatened to burst from him. He focused on the feel of the plastic table against the pads of his fingers, ruminating in the silence.

“You have every right to feel upset, given what you think about him,” she offered lightly.

“You’ve put yourself in a very dangerous position,” he finally replied, when he felt that he could control the timbre of his voice, “and it’s frustrating when I’ve warned you for years, and you still somehow thought that the best place to be was right beside a man like that.”

“Hannibal is a good person, Will,” she said, exasperated.

“You know, if you say it with a little more passion, you may just convince me,” he urged. He needed his hands busy; he fiddled with more ketchup for the fries.

The couple at the farther table was beginning to lose their cool, too. The man’s voice rose and lowered in cadence, rough and stiff with something like the hard consonants of an insult. The woman’s arms were crossed, her posture stiff.

“What are your plans, Will?”

“You already asked me that,” he sighed.

“Are you going to hurt Hannibal?” she pressed, and he looked back to her as he realized what she meant.

“Oh…oh, do I have plans for him?” he asked, incredulously. “Are you serious? I want to stay as far away from that man as I possibly can!”

“It’s not an unfair question.”

“It is when you’re being protective of a man capable of cutting the lungs out of someone while they’re still using them,” he replied sweetly. The more he felt the anger bubbling from the other table, the more he felt an insistent need not to replicate it.

Alana treaded carefully. Maybe she sensed it, too. “I know that in traumatic events, especially when undeserved actions are done against you, it makes sense for people to find ways to blame mentors friends for what happened,” Alana said gently. “You went through something horrifying, and you weren’t really allowed to properly grieve for your losses because everyone turned against you when it happened. It makes sense to me that you, in a time that was plagued not only by severe and horrifying losses but also a sickness that literally set your brain on fire, would take that burden and sub-consciously place it on Hannibal since he’d been trying to help you for months and was unsuccessful.”

By choice.

The man was gesturing with his phone, jabbing for emphasis. The woman was furiously ignoring him, her own soprano cutting into his tirade every so often with something biting but indistinct.

“Is that an apology? You completely believed I killed those people--”

“I never believed you as Will Graham consciously did anything to hurt anyone,” she countered. “I have always believed in you. Did I think that it was entirely probable, given the evidence, that the person that manifested as a result of a high-stress situation coupled with a deadly disease had a capacity for violence? Yes.”

“Those two people are the same person. One just had better control over our time.”

She startled him when she reached forward to grasp his hand just as the man shouted something particuarly foul. “I’m sorry for any time that I made you feel like a criminal.”

Will swallowed with difficulty, and he looked at their hands. Unlike Jack’s, dry and calloused with a life of hard work, Alana’s were smooth and unblemished, nails filed professionally and scented with something floral--Fresias? In stark contrast, his looked much closer to Jack’s, and he saw the precise place that one of Charlie’s hooks had caught on the back and broke skin. He let go of her hand to snag another fry, nodding curtly.

“If you want to talk about Hannibal-”

“I don’t want to talk about Hannibal anymore,” Will said curtly. “When I say that I want to remove him completely from every aspect of my life, I mean that. We can talk about what you want to talk about.”

“What I want to talk about is what you don’t want to talk about,” Alana said with a small smile.

“We can talk about whatever it is that I do or don’t want to talk about, how’s that,” Will offered. He glanced at her eyes, then over her head where a man in a greasy t-shirt carried a to-go order in one meaty fist.

“I don’t want you to worry about me, Will. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long, long time.”

“People that I care about tend to die. Worry comes with the territory.”

“You still have me, your father, and despite what you think, Jack Crawford is very much invested in your well-being.”

A rum deal, no matter how you looked at it. The only one he felt especially grateful for was the one sitting just across from him, and she was currently dating the only person in the world he’d gladly murder.

“Just promise me that you’ll be careful,” he said, looking to his food. The burger had about two bites left, and he wanted to savor them. “I know…I know you believe Hannibal is great, but he’s a snake. His venom is slow acting, and…I just want you to be safe. When the time comes-” He sighed, scrambling to find the words-- “when the time comes that you…have the choice to be blind or brave, Alana, please just be blind. I think maybe he’d let you live if you just chose to be blind.”

“You weren’t blind.”

“Oh, I really was, until I wasn’t. By the time I saw, though, I wasn’t in any position to do anything about it. I think that’s one of his favorite parts.”

“I’m as safe with Hannibal as I am with you,” Alana assured, and Will peeked up at the umbrella again, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

It was in that very first class that he met Francis Dolarhyde, and that was only because Will had gotten lost and slipped in right in the middle of roll call, late but undeterred. Francis Dolarhyde sat alone, although he wasn't bothered when Will sat beside him at the table farthest back from the board. Will pulled out his notebook and his homework, raising his hand less than a minute later when his name was called. Dolarhyde's broad shoulders and muscled build took up nearly half of the table, but they'd just have to manage.

"You have a...nice dog," Francis observed, nodding to Will's photograph. It was an introductory aspect to the class: Tell Us About You.

"Thanks." He glanced over to Francis' photograph of a painting, something that'd been purposefully set up on an easel in the middle of the forest. A photo of a painting; the artistic type. "Do you like that painting, or do you like the aesthetic?"

Francis Dolarhyde had a square jaw and short, buzzed brunette hair. He turned to look at his photograph, and the scarring at his lip gave his smile an altogether crooked appearance.He was easily the biggest guy in class, the jock that all the girls wrote home about. "My favorite painting. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun," he said carefully. His voice caught on the hiss of the 's'. 

"Your favorite painting?"

He nodded. 

"This has been my favorite painting as of late," Will shared, and for reasons he couldn't quite explain he pulled out his phone and showed his table-mate Jael and Sisera. 

Maybe it was the fact that it was an absolute stranger, or maybe it was the fact that his painting seemed just as raw beneath the surface of the oil. He had a lot of alone time at the house. Just Will and Winston. Going to school would force him to be sociable. The dragon lay poised just beneath the maiden, prepared to devour her. Jael lay poised just above Sisera, ready to impale him.

Francis gave the painting a long, searching look, and he seemed to see the same. "I wonder if she'd bear his screams the way she bears the dust from the labor of carving her will into stone," he commented, and he looked to Will with a briefly flickering expression of interest. "He lay like marble."

"I think she'd bear them well enough," Will said, and he looked at her. "I don' think this is the first time she's done this."

"Nor the last?"

Will thought of Alana curling up in Hannibal's bed, cozy, and nodded gravely.

"Do you know why he would have been foolish enough to put his head beneath her hammer?"

"He trusted her enough and fell asleep," Will said. "That was his undoing."

"The moral, then, is don't make his mistake," Francis said, and too late Will realized it was a dryly- uttered joke. 

"Wish I'd gotten that advice a long time ago," he said with a smile.

Francis Dolarhyde laughed, a soft huff, and it was decided they could work together for the quarter.

Two weeks also took him on a date with Molly Foster, whose returned call was so upbeat and pleasant despite his awkward voicemail that he hadn't had the heart to begin to explain why maybe she shouldn't go on a date with him. Would the Chesapeake Ripper target her, should he get too close? Would he kill her in a fit of rage the way he had Charlie?

He found the nicest restaurant he could expect closeby, and so they enjoyed endless cheesy biscuits at Red Lobster. She didn't know him; he reasoned she wouldn't want to stray too far away from home.There was a killer about, or didn't she know?

"That's great that you're going to school. I barely finished, but I'm waiting for something to take off. I hear DC's a good place to look, so that's why I moved here." She had an honest, girl-next-door look that made the conversation flow despite the fact he couldn't quite meet her eyes more than twice throughout the main course.

Nerves had, in truth, gotten the best of him. It was the first honest, genuine date he'd ever been on, after all.

"Photography isn't my thing, but it was the only quarterly class they could offer on such short notice. I just wanted to get started. The history professor said that as long as the final had a passing grade, he'd allow it." He focused on her lovely blouse, floral beneath a cozy cardigan. The orange restaurant lights made her skin golden. "What did you study?"

"Business analysis...no, no I know, boring," she laughed, seeing his expression. It made him look up and meet her eyes, warm and inviting. "That's why I'm taking my time. I want to analyze the right business."

"You're careful in choosing," Will said then, looking to her lips, "as an analyst."

"I am," she agreed, and she stared unabashedly back.

Then he walked her to her car, and she stood blinking up at him, the lights burning from the lamp posts illuminating her face in a fuzzy, warm orange. "I had fun tonight, Will Graham."

"I did too, Molly Foster," he mimicked her inflection lightly, and he managed to look away from the collar of her cardigan to meet her eyes. He smiled slightly, although he couldn't keep her gaze.

"I'd want to go on a second date, if you wanted to take me on it."

His mouth turned to cotton, and his smile grew, guilt doing its best to curtail the pleasure that threatened to overtake his voice. "I'd like to take you on a second date."

She gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he waited until she drove off until he turned and went back to his truck. He stood by it for a time, thinking, then kicked the tire angrily and drove away.

He felt guilty, but after the second date, there was a third. The Chesapeake Ripper did not add a third body to his pile, and Molly enjoyed a walk through the national park to witness the sunset over the Wolf Trap trees. He wondered if she'd looked him up yet. He wondered if Hannibal had looked her up yet. He wondered if it was really all that smart to try and enter into a relationship when your bait was set for a different kind of fish that bit harder and left marks.

By the fourth date, he finally had to say something. Molly made it easy to keep busy, from occasional phone calls to daily texts but now their dates had accumulated too quickly. Too many dates. People didn't go on dates like that unless they meant something by it.

"I'll call you," she said warmly, and they were parting at her car after a rousing round of bowling where she'd soundly beaten him. The neon lights of the bowling alley sign cast her in a cotton candy pink.

"Molly," he began, and she paused from leaning in to give him a soft, chaste kiss on the cheek. She'd done it the last three times, and he'd liked it enough he often touched fingers to the place hours later, puzzled over it. Hannibal had never done that to him. He had toyed with asking Alana for comparison. "I really enjoyed tonight."

Her smile remained, but her eyes belied whatever it was she was seeing on his face. "Why are you saying that like you didn't enjoy tonight?

"I...I don't know if I can take you on another date."

Her blue eyes were purple in the pink light. They blinked slowly, wide and doe-like in the neon. "What's wrong?"

He couldn't quite look at her, eyes off towards the dark spaces where the Chesapeake Ripper could always be lurking, watching. He wondered if he'd get another card on his kitchen table. "I..I like you."

"Okay," she said, suddenly uncertain.

"I've just got a lot of...baggage." He nodded. That was one way of putting it. "Things I don't want you to have to get involved in."

"We all have baggage, Will," Molly replied, and something in her tone made him look back to her, her eyes glassy and her mouth quirked into a half-smile that wasn't at all amused. "Life is about people making connections with other people and learning to deal with their tragic back-stories and baggage."

He wondered what baggage she was afraid of showing him, if it was a bad boyfriend or a bad case of body parts under the floorboards. "Mine could endanger your life," he said seriously; then had the misfortune of seeing the exact moment that she questioned his sanity, the moment she realized maybe she shouldn't want to go on another date with him.

How must that sound to a sane person, Hannibal would have said. These people with their mundane lives. You sound unhinged and delusional, Will.

"I...don't know what to say to that," she admitted, and her nose wrinkled. "It sounds like...a gimmick? Yeah, a gimmick." Her head bobbed, much like it had when the poor kid at JT's Bait Shop couldn't understand the concept of a two dollar bill. "If you don't want to continue dating, you can just say so. I won't get mad. I appreciate honesty, though."

"Did you look me up when you first met me?" he asked bluntly. Maybe a little too harsh? He managed to stare at the edge of her denim jacket, purposefully baggy and rumpled. 

She paused for a long time, and he couldn't quite look to her face to see why. "...No. Did you look me up?"

"No," he replied quickly. "I respect people's privacy."

"Liar," Jared Freeman jeered behind her. "You don't respect Hannibal Lecter's privacy."

"I guess I was going to until I saw you make the look on your face that you're making right now," she said, and her voice softened. She pitied whatever it was she was seeing in him. Fear? Maybe. Maybe a bit of self-disgust. Maybe some resignation in the lines by his mouth. "Made me think maybe you didn't feel comfortable with the idea of it."

"Statistically speaking, that means you could have gone on a date with a rapist," he pointed out, although he couldn't say why. He didn't want to frighten her, for God's sake. Did he have to be so nervous? He'd survived a psychopath twice over, and yet the idea of seeing the look on her face made his knees weak?

"I have mace," she assured him. "And you didn't give me that impression. Kinda...more like you were running from something."

"Someone," he said, much softer. He sighed, something more resigned than angry. "It's okay to look me up, but I'd ask you reserve judgement until you also ask me whatever questions you have. I'll try and be as honest as I can...I promise I'm not what they thought I was."

"Okay, Will Graham," she said, and she swooped up and pressed a firm, warm kiss on his open mouth. He inhaled it, and his breath caught. "Like I said, I'll call you."

"Okay," he replied, much too late. She was already getting into her car and starting it, the darkness of the cab casting her in shadows. 

He had assignments due, otherwise he would have puzzled over that kiss for most of the night. As it was, he passed his fingers over it and thought of how he'd once drunkenly kissed Alana Bloom so boldly, with nothing to lose and a mind melting from the fire. He felt charmed, but then again; he'd been charmed by Hannibal, too. He took photos of Winston walking through the tall grass that had burst from an early morning rain with a camera he'd snagged from the nearby Wal-Mart. Photography wasn't his thing, but he was going to try. If he could pass these, they'd allow him to enter a full-time status for the summer program.

-

Then, the second letter came.

My Dear Will Graham,

When I saw your release from prison, I thought: Dare I? Of course I do. I would not have risked corresponding with you while you were incarcerated, in case it was used against you. I who have looked up to your work, who has ascended from it on a level that I know you would understand. 

That is what it is you do, is it not? Understand?

I believe we have much in common, you and I. They're calling you innocent now, but they will only do their best to find other ways of locking you up again. You can't have taken her lungs so clean and they not try to find means again of caging you.

I have something to show you. I think you'd appreciate it; maybe see what it is I aim to ascend to and Become. Until then, I remain your,

-Avid Fan

This one Will found laying propped against his screen door. It felt like pills souring in his stomach to read it, and he sat out on the porch steps for a long time, thinking. Just in front of him, he imagined Jared Freeman pacing back and forth, back and forth.

"Call someone," he suggested, and his gaze darted about. "Can't trust the cops, but that Crawford guy..."

"Don't call Molly Foster," Garrett Jacob Hobbs advised. Will agreed.

He needed to call her at some point to now definitely cut things off. If the Chesapeake Ripper was calling himself an Avid Fan now, that was one alias too many to make sure he'd be able to keep her safe, should Hannibal decide to lash out. Had he witnessed their kiss? Had he crept, lurking and careful in the bushes and witnessed that there was someone else in the world that thought Will capable of receiving affection?

Problem was, it didn't feel like the Chesapeake Ripper baiting him, all cruel words hidden behind kind veneers of pleasant professionalism. It felt different, foreign. Rather than mocking, biting, the way the Chesapeake Ripper surely would be after finally allowing Will to be released, the words felt...awed. The person that wrote this thought that Will circumvented the law. They thought he was a killer.

They wanted to show him something, too.

It took a long time for him to realize the tapping noise in the static of his thoughts was his fingers on the deck, but that didn't stop it. They tapped, his heart stuttered, and Will Graham wondered just who in the hell he was supposed to tell about this, or if he'd been crying wolf for so long that no one could bother to care.

-

Will took a walk and found himself sitting with Peter Bernadone, just outside of the barn where he nursed birds back to health and set them free when possible. He spoke lovingly of a parakeet that had an attachment to him, one whose wing wouldn't unfold quite right. It eased at the ragged bite of the morning to think of things once broken made new. Peter was kind, and he desperately needed to think on kind things.

"I'm glad you came," Peter said, and they shared root beers Will had picked up on the way. He wasn't sure what it was he was hoping to find, sitting there beside him. He couldn't burden someone like Peter with something so horrific as the things he knew, the way he often woke up feeling the ghosts creeping just down the hall from where he once slept.

Was this Hannibal? Or was this someone new? If it was Hannibal, just what did that mean for him? Just what did he want to show to Will, and what was Will going to do to stop it?

If it wasn't Hannibal, just how in the hell was he going to detangle himself from it before he woke up with another killer strangling him to death? God, he was getting tired of drowning on the blood of so many innocent.

"Thanks for making time to talk," Will replied, and they sat on the bales and watched the horses. 

"A-are you okay?" Peter asked, and he peered over at Will gravely. "You look...awful sorrowful about somethin'." He was keener than he seemed. Being around animals, he saw the small expressions most didn't notice. 

"Have you ever had a secret that you tried to share, but no one would believe you?" Will asked. "Something that was really important, but no one thought you were telling the truth?"

Peter stilled, and the finches in the cage at their feet entertained the air around them before he found the words he was looking for, jaw working furiously. "I...yeah, I know about that."

"You do?" Will asked, surprised.

"I b-been thinkin' about tellin' people the truth...maybe they believe me, maybe not, but I gotta say somethin'. You said something, I heard. You told the truth, even when no one believed you."

Will couldn't meet his gaze, embarrassed. Everyone knew who the infamous Will Graham was, even Peter. He couldn't go anywhere without someone knowing his fucking name.

"I feel like right now I have to keep it a secret to get what I want in the end," said Will, and he swung his legs, kicking the hay bale beneath them. He timed the swings with his heartbeat.

"What do you want in the end?" 

"Justice." Kind of.

Peter nodded. "That's not so bad. You...should do what gets justice."

Will nodded resolutely. He still wasn't sure what to do about the letter. Not for the first time, the sound of Jack Crawford filled his mind, angry and haggard: What if wasn't Hannibal Lecter? What if the Chesapeake Ripper is someone they didn't know or understand in any capacity, and Will was taunting an innocent man as well as a killer? 

"You should too," he said. He wasn't sure if he should ask what it was Peter felt that no one would believe. It felt private, grave. "I don't regret it. Maybe I'd have done it a little different, but I'd have still done it."

"Oh, I...I will." Peter's brow furrowed, and he looked down to the finches and cooed to them, gentle. "I think if...i-if we don't stand up for somethin', no one will."

-

The time between a morning shift and a mid-afternoon class was staggeringly short. Will managed a bag of dollar burgers from McDonalds, and he'd gotten two of them shoved down his throat before he was driven to a stop by the large crowd of people that buffeted the sidewalks beside the dorms.

"So fucking scary, oh my god..."

"--couldn't believe they got in there, how'd they--"

"You know they keep the back door open, sick fuck probably strolled right in..."

"I need to call my dad."

"Back up, back up!" This from a police officer that was busy sectioning off part of the walkway towards the dorms. "I understand that some of you live here, but you'll need to give us a minute, please."

"What's going on?" Will asked, only for the cop to brush by him with the police tape in hand. He didn't spare Will a second glance, and there was something ironic to it, that at eighteen he'd had more access to that sort of information than he does now.

"Someone got killed," a student next to him replied, eyes across the quad. "In the Tower Dorms."

"What?"

"Yeah," they said with a nod. There was a thumb print on their left glasses lens, likely adjusted during a particularly rousing round of note-taking. "Someone says the mirrors in the bathroom are broken, and it's bad."

Will first thought of Hannibal, and how maybe he'd pushed the Chesapeake Ripper a little too far. But then he thought of the letter in his pocket, how it hadn't sounded so much arrogant as it was admiring, and a strange cold seemed to settle into his feet and make it hard to walk away.

"Who did they kill?" he asked, hoarse.

"Dunno yet, but it was the first floor and..." they grimaced, their thin lips puzzling over whatever was on their mind. "She was naked," they finally added.

"FBI," Will observed, and he chewed on his bottom lip. If Jack Crawford was there, he was going to be most decidedly not.

"You think a serial killer?" a young woman asked the student next to him. "FBI doesn't just show up to a homicide."

"I think whatever it is, it's bad enough the FBI showed up," the kid next to him said, somber. "Guys probably just strolled in and said they'd take it from here."

And that felt like Will's queue to leave. He waited for the space behind him to shift just slightly, and he made a break for it, slipping along the side leading away from the crime scene. If it was a serial killer, it was Jack Crawford's department. If it was psychological, it was Jack Crawford's department. 

If it had anything to do with the note in Will's pocket, it was Jack Crawford's department.

"Jason just texted and said it was the girl that was in the room next to his friend Hayley," a girl said, thumbs frantically working prose across the keyboard.

"Oh my god, she knew her?"

"What if he's not done?"

Will skirted around them and tucked his hands into his pockets, tense.

"We don't even know what he did. How could we know if he's done?"

He'd just rounded the corner to safety when he had the misfortune of walking right into the very man he was trying to avoid.

"Will," Jack greeted, falsely cheerful.

"Jack," Will said warily, taking a step back. He was half a breath away from running. Prey was flight, fight, or freeze, and Will wasn't going to fight a battle like this.

"Will! We were just talking about you," his photography teacher exclaimed. She was a pleasant, upbeat woman with a habit of gesturing wildly when caught up in the middle of her lectures. Her passion was photography of animals, as she'd confided in Will on the first day. Today, that was deflated in the wake of the ripple of rumor, the sudden sense that all was not well and good within the walls of learning. There were stress lines near her forehead and eyes.

"Why?" he asked, looking at Jack Crawford.

"Well--because--" she fumbled at that, and she looked to Jack beside her.

Jack had been waiting for his moment. "Because unfortunately, Will, you are a person of interest considering the nature of your own history."

Unfortunately, like Jack didn't love the opening this was going to give him to wheedle back into Will's life and make himself at home. One unpleasant house visit wasn't enough. The letter burned in his pocket. "Murders aren't common on campus until I show up," he said to his teacher.

"Now, really what we want is to establish a base of support," Ms. Newman explained quickly. Her eyes cut to Jack, then back. They were red despite her brave face. "You being here has nothing to do with what's just happened, but because of your past Agent Crawford wanted to make sure that you're in a safe place mentally and physically."

"Oh I'm as safe as he wants me to be," Will assured her.

Jack's eyes narrowed. Will hadn't specified which 'he'. "Will you come with me?"

Will did a congenial u-turn and waited expectantly. "Do I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice! Agent Crawford, really I must--"

"Ms. Newman, it looks like one of your students needs you," Jack redirected, and Will looked up at the sky that threatened to be a positively beautiful day.

"You've always had a choice," Jack said, after Ms. Newman was well enough on her way to support Will from a distance.

"Sure didn't feel that way, Agent Crawford," said Will, not unkind. Not quite kind, either. The sky was the sort of blue one could get lost in.

He was glad the crowd prevented any further discussion, and they worked their way to the now thoroughly strung-up police tape. Will got to enjoy being the spectacle of walking under the rope with an FBI agent after just talking about it with someone in the crowd, and there was a tight feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with the note in his pocket or the thought of Hannibal's next move.

"I thought you were done being his dog," Jared said, and he circled Jack as they walked across the dewy grass and cut dark swathes of ribbon towards the crime scene.

"It's not really the Chesapeake Ripper's style, but it is right on campus," Jack said. Will's chest constricted in response. "I don't know if you want to know about the victim, or--"

"I don't want to know about the victim," he said, voice tinny. "I don't even want to be here right now."

Something about that kept Jack from answering, and they walked into the maw of the dorm hall with trepidation and steps that echoed too loud on the marble tile.

The room is 213, and Will stared at it for a long time. It's a dorm room on the first floor, and it occurred to him after about first five seconds of staring that it's an odd number for a first floor. Not 113, 213. That stuck, even after the door opened. It hit the wall, and 213 seemed to hit a little harder, and he thought of the first time he'd ever felt someone's hands wrapped tight around his throat, squeezing.

"Will?"

Still, it was good to see him, get things over with. A punch to the gut, but a necessary one. Hannibal was dating Alana. Another punch, but a manageable one. Will needed a hobby to keep his mind busy, a distraction. Maybe he'd pay and take a class or two for the time that yawned between the baiting and the bite.

-

Beverly Katz had always been an interesting person to Will. Someone that seemed to see his quirks and mind them, and she'd taken his alleged murder spree pretty hard. 

Determination and grit, he would suppose, explain what drove her. Top of the class at school, all because her fury at what Will did drove her to write a thesis on the matter at GWU, one so thorough that she one day made a startling revelation, one so extraordinary that she fell off of her work stool and hit her tailbone, hard.

Her thesis had taken a turn, all because she'd stumbled upon the one point Will had been trying to make the entire time: He was innocent.

The FBI had fast-tracked her application after that. Gotcha, she'd said, sitting down across from Will three years after he'd been imprisoned. 

“You look rough, lumberjack,” Beverly said by way of greeting, sitting down across from him. It was a small, nondescript café, and Will took his coffee black, studying her as he lazily stirred his spoon.

“You don't," he replied.

Clever edges just like Alana's tilted, then quirked into a smile. “The academy was good to me,” she boasted. “There's a few things I have to do for my final classes first, but I passed the courses. You’re looking at an official FBI agent.”

“I'll keep my distance. Don't give my regards to your boss," he warned. He didn't want to give them any opportunities.

"The FBI's the best asset you've got."

“Thank you,” he said, and it had nothing to do with assets or bosses.

Beverly sobered somewhat, and she busied herself with her macchiato. Extra caramel. “It wasn’t just me. As much as I hate to say it, that shrimp of yours really knew how to dig places that I couldn’t reach.”

“That’s because Freddie Lounds doesn’t have the same scruples about the law."

“You could say I didn’t, either.”

“Not once did you break the law.”

“Is that an accusation in Freddie Lounds’ corner?”

“More of an observation."

They exchanged smiles, and somehow this was more validating of his freedom than anything else had been. He'd missed Beverly.

“What now, then?” she asked.

“Alana is dating Hannibal.”

She focused on her macchiato rather than try and find the words to convey the bitter silence that stretched between them. Will focused on the steam that rose from his cup and curled into the air. He couldn't help but wonder how many other setbacks he'd stumble across.

"That will make things...difficult," she managed after some thought. 

"Complicates things," he agreed.

"Do you think that's on purpose?" she asked.

He'd turned that over for most of the night after Alana had confessed her bleak future with Hannibal Lecter. It'd weighed in his gut, lead  that pressed heavier and heavier as late night TV droned in the background.

"I think it's intentional, but there's nothing we can do about that. It doesn't change things, just complicates them."

Beverly snickered, one of the things that hadn't changed since high school. "You're going to lose a friend in all this if you're not careful."

He'd considered that, too. "Probably. Doesn't change anything, either."

"Fair." She scowled. "You think they're banging?"

"Yeah," Jared nodded. "Like rabbits."

"Probably." Will shrugged. "More than likely."

"What's that like, I wonder," she said, more to herself than to Will.

He took that small distinction as an opportunity not to answer. 

They drank their coffee in silence, Will watching the crowd and taking in the small glimpses of mundane existence. It was much like peeking behind a curtain to something secret, those lives he'd never see again, but there was something in their distracted, busy natures that he longed for. Mundane worries, like broken faucets or a missed deadline at work. Friends not texting back--being the friend that didn't text back. He hadn't really had the chance to do that, live something mundane. 

"It's good to see you out of there, Will," Beverly said as they went to part ways. 

"Thanks, Bev. It's...going to be good to be out of there."

"Just call when you're ready."

"Will do," Will said, and that was more a truth than what he'd told Bill Graham.

-

"I know."

"I mean, I'm just absolutely shocked, Will, shocked!"

"I know."

"Do you realize that he could have called the cops? He could have gotten you arrested and thrown back in jail?"

"Yes," he sighed.

"This was the kind of thing that I was afraid of! When I asked if you had any plans for Hannibal this is what I was referring to!"

"I know, I know."

"He's more concerned for your mental health than anything, but someone else wouldn't have been," Alana railed. 

Will took it in stride, seated at the curb just outside of where he had an interview to work in a mechanic shop. A few days of vigorous applications had led him to this place, but it'd also apparently led Hannibal to Alana where he'd made the bold choice to reveal Will's midnight exploits. Will wondered if it was petty revenge or Hannibal's need to revel how easy it was to manipulate her.

"Did it occur to you that I could have been sleeping over?" 

"It didn't," he replied honestly.

"What would you have done if I'd come down the stairs?"

Will pondered that for a moment, drumming fingers on the steering wheel. Across the street, two women had a play date for their children set up at a quaint coffee shop. They chatted amiably while the two girls colored at their smaller table.

"I'd have ran," he decided at last.

"Will," she admonished. "What if he'd called Jack?"

"I bet if I flashed something about the Ripper he'd have let me off so long as it didn't also reference Hannibal," he said, quiet.

"Don't give them any other reason to try and control you," she said, and it only faintly echoed Hannibal's threat. Did they take you off of your medication?

"What's it do to take anti-psychotics that you don't need?" Jared wondered, pacing just in front of him. "You as crazy now as they thought you were?"

"I'm sorry, Alana, I won't do it again," he said, and it sounded damn near sincere. "Just some residual anger, I guess, but I got it out of my system." Seeing Hannibal so ready to unleash his cruel side had helped in some way, bolstered him when he saw him bare his teeth in the dark. It was fitting to first see him cast in shadows this time. The first time they'd met, he'd been sitting underneath the hallway light.

"Really?" she asked dubiously. "Are you going to go and see someone about it at least? Or even just about anything that's happened?"

"I spent the last four year under the scrutiny of doctors digging into my brain like teenagers behind the bleachers at a football game, and you think I'm going to go and pay one to do it?" he laughed, and he chewed at his thumb idly, more to have something to do with his mouth than cuss. "I'm actually going into a job interview. Like I said, I need to have busy hands. Get a job is on my list."

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop," she said with a sigh. "Good luck, Will."

"Thanks, Alana."

"I think you owe Hannibal an apology."

"I don't, and you can tell him I said that. But also remind him to leave me the hell alone."

"Will-"

"Have a good day, Alana," he urged, and he hung up.

-

A week passed, and he found himself the proud owner of the title Shift Lead at Wilson's Auto Body. It was a crowning achievement that he shared with absolutely no one. It kept his hands busy, and it felt about as honest as he was going to get anytime soon.

When he wasn't working, he mindlessly distracted himself with fixing the house up, doing remedial repairs to damages from the winter. He thought of Nicholas Boyle carved open in the field, kisses stolen in the heat of desperation, and he kept his back to it.

He hadn't had the phone a month before he started rejecting calls from Jack Crawford. Will supposed news traveled fast in the FBI, and if Beverly was going to work closely under him in the BAU, she'd have to share information when requested.  Will hadn't let him get more than ten seconds on the line before he'd hung up the first time, and  every other call since went to voicemail.

Work was tedious said the assistant manager during the orientation That wasn't the case for Will, hungry as he was to simply do. Four years did something to the mind, made the idea of work even so boring as oil changes and air pressure checks exciting. Eyes burned holes into walls when a mind needed to be busy. Teeth chewed through lips when a mind had nothing to turn to.

His new coworkers complained, but they didn't seem to know just how good they had things, how even a freedom so simple as bitching on the job was just that--freedom given. Money bought clothes, shelter, meals; meals of your choice that tasted much better than the dry part of a sponge. There were other ways of eating three squares that didn't taste so good going down.

The hours after work yawned open. He re-stained chairs at the house and even painted the white rails on either side of the steps leading up to the front door. Will fixed leaks, kinks, faulty valves, and a windows whose latches didn't want to stay. He didn't think to ask the landlord for compensation as he did it. Will considered it an investment for when he finally tried to buy the thing off of her. He needed to stay busy, and the house needed repairs.

Like Beverly said, call when ready. He was still waiting for the timing to be just right. At night, Winston stretched across the end of the bed, and he stared up at the ceiling and counted the blinks of his eyelids, waiting for sleep to claim him. 

It was the same ceiling as the one his father once stared up at, he figured. The associations came when darkness fell, and he pondered a mind so fragile as to fall apart and make new whenever stress became too much a burden to bear. Did Bill Graham lay awake those nights and wonder just what in the hell was wrong with his son just down the hall? Had he ever pressed an ear to the door when Will came to, screaming, or had he simply turned over in his sleep to ignore it? Will thought of each house they'd moved through like turning pages in a pop-up book, each life rising with the fall of the last.

Not for the first time, there was the lingering notion that not once in the entire time they'd lived there did Bill Graham ever go to check on his son in the middle of the night when he'd woken from a nightmare. Hard to say if it was because he was a heavy sleeper, or because he wasn't even home to check.

The medicine from the hospital was cold turkey. Insomnia haunted him in the weeks that followed his release. He needed another hobby.

-

JT's Bait Shop sat just outside of Wolf Trap National Forest, and that's where Will liked to do his shopping. It was quick, it carried Sour Cream and other essentials, and if you had to pick it out from around the fresh worms best used for fishing that were housed in small Styrofoam containers, that was your problem. Not JT's. 

On one such trip, Will snagged a jug of milk that cost an extra buck sixty-eight--not worth a trip into town--and strolled to the counter, fishing out few small bills. The cashier was a teenager he'd seen in there before, a local kid that knew just about anybody, and just in front of Will stood a whole heap of frustration with a high blonde ponytail bobbing and jerking in frustration.

"I don't care what you think, two dollar bills do in fact exist, and you can't deny legal tender."

"Ma'am, I've never seen a two-dollar bill, and I'm not comfortable accepting this."

"But it's legal tender!"

"I've never even heard of a two-dollar bill."

"Is this a generational thing?!"

The teen at the counter was uncomfortable. Red was creeping up his neck in patches while he tried to reason with her. "Uh, it's more of a security thing..."

From behind, the woman's ponytail was the sort of honeyed blonde that caught colors under the hi-beam florescent bulbs. It quivered, then jerked as her head tilted just-so. "I'd google it if I thought that'd be enough to convince you."

"I'm more than happy to call my boss again if you'd like."

"Oh, JT is gonna pick up his phone this time, you think?"

"It's his son that owns it now, his name's Les," he said unhelpfully. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, nervous. Saying no to customers wasn't his past time.

"Les, yeah, my mistake!"

"Ma'am, if you could just-"

"I got it," said Will, and he laid the cash on the counter. 

The woman turned, baby blue eyes prickling as she flipped her frustration onto him. "It's the principle of the thing, but thanks."

"He's not taking that bill."

"He is," she countered.

Will blinked, and there was a blurry moment in the bait shop where he swore it was Abigail glaring at him like that, all fire and brimstone. Lips pursed because Marissa had said something stupid, and she wanted to fix it. He blinked again, and the woman's face was warmer, her eye color less like still water and more like the foam cresting the wave. The sun was kind to her, and there was no sun to be kind to Abigail because she was most certainly dead.

"Hi, Will," the teen said, recognizing him from other sad little grocery trips. Relief was a rush of sweat that made the red rise up onto his cheeks. A local here to rescue him from the crimes of forged two-dollar bills. Tourist season was coming, and he wasn't going to be prepared for it. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he said distractedly, then, "I don't mind."

"But I mind," she protested. 

Will minded a lot of things, and this entire scenario was one of them. When the pause dragged, he let out a sigh and slapped down a few more bucks. "That's for the milk, too," he said to the kid, and he walked out of the shop to his truck. That fight wasn't his, and he had to stop doing that.

"Hey!"

He fished his key out and ignored the woman calling out to him. Winston was waiting in the truck, and he could hear the tail smacking against the jockey box before the door had even opened.

"Hey," she said again, reaching him at a jog. In the fast approaching sunset, the grasping fingers of light did her hair far more justice than the gas station lightbulbs had. "I was trying to talk to you."

"I'm trying to leave," he replied.

"Got someplace to be?"

"With milk?" He shrugged non-committedly. "Home."

Be it the indignantly puzzled look on her face or how her mouth worked the words over that she wanted to say, something made his hand hesitate on the handle. Her jaw clenched, unclenched, then she said, "I didn't need rescued in there."

"Over a couple of bucks, I'd believe it," he agreed. 

"Why'd you do it, then?"

Why,  indeed? Because that's what he did, even when he didn't quite want to, right? Fix things? Repair things? He shrugged and opened the door, stopping Winston just shy of leaping from the car to greet them. "Just being helpful, I guess."

She looked like she wanted to argue that a little more, but at the armful of dog, she was pleasantly distracted. "Is that your rush?" she asked. A smile warred with her indignation.

"Yes," he lied, working his fingers through Winton's fur. "Don't keep dogs in cars; isn't that the rule?"

"I think it's on hot days with the windows rolled up, but I get it," she agreed, and whatever war she'd felt the need to wage abated, there in a whirlwind and somehow all at once gone. "My name's Molly."

"I'm Will."

"I heard," she said, and her smile grew a little. She seemed older than him by just a year or so. It wasn't in her face, but in her eyes that seemed an even darker blue in the sunset. "You always this helpful to strangers, Will?"

"Sometimes," he said with a shrug. "Sometimes I'm not."

"I caught you on a good day, then?"

He glanced to the sky, then back to her eyes. His fingers felt soft wrapped in Winton's fur, although the dog breath was an issue. He'd need to get some dental chew-ables "...A pretty good day, yeah."

There was another pause, rough like the one inside the shop, but this one Molly seemed bent on breaking. She shifted from one foot to the other, and she tilted her head, ponytail swaying to the side. Her eyes cut to Winston, then back to Will. "You ever give your phone number out, or is this not that kind of good day?"

Do you date, Will?

Knee-jerk was to say no, there wasn't ever really a day like that for him because the few times he'd had days like that they'd ended up particularly awful, but the protest couldn't quite make it past his stomach. It rose with the acid, then stopped, waiting for something. His eyes traced over hair--wheat in the rapidly dripping sun--before something tugged at his lips, akin to a smile.

"I think it could be that kind of good day," he said, and he fished his phone out for her. "Sit," he said, and Winston sat in the driver's seat to wait.

She put her number in and passed it back to him. It was a curious thing, pressing send and letting it ring before he hung up and plugged in the name Molly with Winston's breath hot on his ear. He didn't want to quite call it excitement that stirred in his gut, but it was something too pleasant to be called anxiety. A girl wanted his number. A girl wanted him to call her.

"Call me sometime," she said as she went to save his number. The smile she flashed was cheeky as she glanced up. "You got a last name to go with that first one?"

He thought to lie about it, but the thought couldn't quite gain traction. Most people knew the name 'Will Graham', and likely in her pending searches through Google and Facebook she'd stumble across his tragic tale and every sordid detail of it. It surely meant that when the time came and he called she'd let it go to voicemail, the nice guy not-so-nice now that she knew just what it took for him to get there, but...