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elfnerdherder · 6 years

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Ill Intentions: Chapter 16

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Chapter 16: An Element of Surprise

Will Graham stared at the two-way mirror in front of him, and he tried to ignore the headache that sat just behind his left eye. Time moved differently when one was being questioned. He had to keep looking at his watch to ensure that time was moving at an even pace.

“Having trouble keeping eye contact, Mr. Graham?”

“There’s nothing new there to see, Jack.”

Jack didn’t like the familiarity of his Christian name being used. His mouth puckered, and he looked ready to spit venom.

Will looked back to Jack’s earlobe. “Don’t I get a phone call?”

Jack considered him for a long moment, then nodded. “At the end.”

The room was a normal 8x8 with boring cement walls and a boring aluminum chairs. His watch was only at forty percent. He’d been there for a couple of hours.

“I told you everything I know,” Will protested. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“See, at first I was pretty willing to believe that,” Jack agreed, only he didn’t sound so agreeable. “A reporter sniffs out a crazy, things happen. He’s willing to cooperate, I’m willing to cooperate. I think that I’m an agreeable man when things make sense.”

Will agreed with no such sentiment, considering everything that’d happened since their first meeting.

“But when it gets back to me that you’re trying to dig into medical records, I get a little nervous. When you’re still going places without telling anyone, attending galas without telling anyone –”

“–As though a reporter can’t just go to a God damn gala, honestly –”

“And your little friend Freddie Lounds accidentally lets it slip that you two are working together –”

The look Jack Crawford gave him was somehow both stern yet betrayed. Their hated of Freddie Lounds, the very tie that created their small alliance, had unraveled. Somewhere, Will had overplayed his hand there. Freddie’s mouth was too big.

“You can’t arrest me for playing nice at work,” Will whispered. “You have your job to worry about, and I have mine.”

Jack wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Somewhere along the way, with Abigail, homeless men, the Ripper, and now this, Will had missed it. He could see the change in skin tone, the lighter strip where the ring had rested for so long, vulnerable and bare. He wondered if Jack worried over the spot often, so long he’d had something there to touch. He wondered if he was a widow, or if his own obsession with the Ripper had taken precedent over other people.

In truth, Will could relate to that.

“You’re aware that you’ve been arrested for obstruction of justice and impeding an investigation. After speaking with the DA, we’re willing to cut a deal and let these charges go, should you comply and cooperate with our investigation in catching the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“I have been cooperating.”

Jack snatched a file up from the table and opened it, slapping papers down with definitive, sharp thwack’s.

“Then why is it that the Chesapeake Ripper is leaving you a dead body that the Maestro first tried to send?” he snarled. “What game are you playing here, Mr. Graham?”

Will stared at the photos of the body that’d dropped on him. It was not the pallor or rigor mortis of the corpse that disgusted him, but rather the throat that’d been peeled back to expose vocal cords that Will had only seen once before –it was rather difficult to forget what bleached vocal cords looked like, after all.

It was the body from his apartment. The Chesapeake Ripper’s favor.

“…I’m not playing any games, Agent Crawford,” he said, and he tried to make his voice shake ever-so-slightly. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re not getting played.”

Jack’s sigh was aged, rancid. He slapped the file closed, and he stood. “I’m having a psychiatrist do an evaluation on you. Depending on what he has to say about this matter, depends on whether or not I’m inclined to agree with you.”

“Do I have any say in this?”

The door was closing just behind him as Jack replied, “No.”

It took awhile for the psychiatrist to show. Seconds ticked, minutes passed, and Will stared at the photos of the dead body. Time had not done the victim well; the contortion of his limbs seemed painful, even in passing, and there were lacerations at his mouth; likely from where the Ripper had pulled the neck of the cello out. Will wondered where the Ripper was now, if he was laughing at his joke. He wondered just what notes the Maestro had intended to play for him. Will Graham & Co.

The door opened.

His watch beeped with a reminder; wake up.

“Good afternoon. Will Graham, was it?”

Will watched the Chesapeake Ripper stride across the room and sit down across from him.

Rather, he watched the man from the gala stride across the room, face remarkably placid despite once having dared to cry in public at the voice of an angel.

He heard the Chesapeake Ripper, and that’s all that mattered.

Face to face, at last. Will’s heart skipped a beat, then began to pound violently.

“…Yes, that’s right.”

“I’m Dr. Lecter, and I’ll be doing your psychiatric evaluation. Is that alright?”

Will leaned back into his chair and folded his arms tight across his chest. His heels dug into the cement floor. “I think that you and I both know that I don’t have a choice in that.”

“You know, I’ve a remarkable associate that I could ask a favor of, if you’re uncomfortable. We always have a choice, in some way or another.”

“Do you really believe that?” Will asked with a snort.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s smile was all teeth. “Don’t you?”

He was dressed rather eclectically, tweed with a matching taupe tie. Silvering ashen hair was combed neatly with a professional part, and Will could imagine the two of them across from one another in utter darkness, eating a bird whose song charmed God. This guy looked the part to find a person willing to sell him Ortolan under the table. He was handsome, in an intense sort of way. There was something purposeful, rigid in his face, as though he were two seconds away from being severe. The straight, firm line of his mouth only added to it, coupled with incisors that looked lethal enough to tear flesh.

“Sometimes we have a choice. Other times, emotion removes the ability to truly choose, blinded as we can be,” Will said.

Dr. Lecter tilted his head slightly. “Do you often feel as though you are not in control?” he wondered. Will thought of his voice pressed close, the dead body placed neatly on his dining room chair. His voice was the same.

His voice was the fucking same.

“I keep myself more scheduled than most, I’d say. I remain in pretty good control.”

Hannibal glanced down to the photos of the dead body in front of them, then looked back up to Will with an amiably sympathetic expression. “Do you truly think so?”

Will laughed, and he looked over Hannibal’s shoulder to the mirror, his ashen face staring back at him. His head ached. He thought about the magpie and wondered if it’d be alright. He wondered if he’d gotten the quarter in the end, or if they’d confiscated it.

“They’re not recording this. Doctor, patient confidentiality,” Dr. Lecter assured him.

“Thank you.”

“In two weeks’ time you are, coincidentally enough, going to be my patient. I thought it morally necessary to maintain that same professionalism now.”

“You recognized my name?”

“When Agent Crawford made the call, I couldn’t refuse. I do try to keep in mind all of my new patients, and I thought it better for you and myself than to be questioned by anyone else,” said Dr. Lecter. This time, his smile was small, a secret thing for the two of them. Will wanted to hold it close and hoped that Jack wasn’t watching.

“Do you enjoy games, Dr. Lecter?” Will asked.

“I’d say that I enjoy them as much as any other man.”

“But no more. Only enough to appear utterly normal in every way, shape, and form.”

“Do you feel that you do the same, Will? Do you wear a person suit?”

“If so, it’s a bad one, don’t you think? I stand out like a sore thumb.”

The good doctor laughed, fine lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. They were the color of a faded barn door, lines of brown cutting through the rich color. He wondered what they looked like in the sunlight.

“I believe your suit depends on who is around you. You don their persona as you see fit. Some people you fear to see, to take upon yourself, but others you take to as a fish to water.”

“Who do you think I’d fear to see?”

“Your Avid Fan is someone that first comes to mind. With such a mind as theirs, surely perception would be a tool that is pointed both ways. They may see the world as a stage for their most vivid dreams and horrors to play out, but you’re also the one able to stand beside them and see it, too.”

Will licked dry lips and tilted his head, mirroring the man just across from him. “Understanding doesn’t mean guilt.”

“Your taking in Miss Hobbs after she came all this way to find you would tell me otherwise, Mr. Graham,” the Chesapeake Ripper said kindly. “How is she doing?”

Will thought of the Subway she worked at, and he wondered if he should have just bought a bag of chips rather than pay so much for such a terrible sandwich. Maybe he’d have felt a little bit better about this whole arrest and current situation.

Granted, sitting down across from the Chesapeake Ripper hadn’t been on his list of things to-do today, but so far it was going well.

The game was getting really, really interesting.

“…I may feel some responsibility,” he said after a moment. “Although it’s not my fault that the FBI decided to kick down her door. I know that.”

“Do you often wonder, though, how different it would have gone had you been there instead?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think you’d have been able to save her father, that she didn’t have to watch both her greatest nightmare and her greatest protector fall?”

In the light, the Ripper had a way of cupping his cheek as he spoke, his gaze so fixed that there was no question his intention was solely on Will. That sort of seeing, that sort of fixation, was enough that Will’s normally swinging foot stilled, pressed hard to the cement where the cement pushed back. It was grounding, his stare. He thought of the drug addict he’d stabbed and wondered if the doctor had been giving him much the same look in the dark alley.

He wanted to ask; he figured he’d better not.

“I think there was no way that Garrett Jacob Hobbs was leaving that house alive,” he replied after a time. “I think that he’d have found a way to die no matter who was there. His world was ending. Her world was ending. There was no case to plead. Likely he knew what happens to guys like that that go to prison. Death was mercy, and he was selfish until the last second.”

“How do you feel about death? Do you also see it as a sort of mercy?”

He thought of the Ripper saving that man, only out of some sort of responsibility to the body shutting down rather than the person inside of it. Action and reaction. He’d let both Will and the would-be mugger live.

I was curious.

“Death…is personal to everyone, I think. My mom always said you couldn’t tell someone how to grieve because they were the one dealing with death. The one that died has the easy job of dying, but it’s those they leave behind that have to face death fully and try to understand.” Will shrugged and bit at a hangnail on his thumb. “I think sometimes its mercy, and sometimes its unjust. Mostly, though, it simply is. We as humans imbue it with meaning, but death itself is neither good nor evil. It is the simple balance of nature.”

“Were you close with your mother?”

“Aren’t all young men?” Will returned, equally as calm.

“I was unable to, as my mother passed when I was very young.” Dr. Lecter adjusted his notepad and scratched a few things down. “I imagine that we would have been.”

“What is death to you, Dr. Lecter? Do you imbue it with meaning?”

“If we are the ones to give death its importance, then yes. Death is an elevation. In the bible, they speak of people rising up as angels, as guardians and heralds to god.”

“Almost like a reward. When one suffers, it is with the hope that there is a payoff for their suffering.”

“What is your payoff in this, then?” Dr. Lecter asked. “After the Ripper is caught, after the FBI finally leaves you to your paper and your work, what is the payoff for all of this suffering?”

The way he said suffering didn’t make it sound so awful. It sounded tempting, something that rolled off of the tongue and left you wanting. Will watched his lips, then looked back to his eyes.

Why did he have to be so god damn interesting?

“I was thinking of a vacation, actually. I’ve been compounding vacation since I first started there, so…something far away. Something relaxing.”

“Something where you can forget your close encounters with the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“No matter where I go, that’s not something I can forget, Dr. Lecter.”

That small smile returned, fleeting and all-knowing. “Not with the way your mind works, at least.”

“Not with the way that my mind works,” Will agreed.

“Do you think that you could go back to writing after this? Given how eloquent your writing has been since everything began.”

Are serial killers your muse?

“Have you read my works, doctor?” Will asked with mock surprise.

“I’ve been following them off and on, yes. You’re a hit in Baltimore, too, given your attendance at the gala. It seems that everywhere you go, you leave something memorable behind. You’ve even a little bit of a following, so I’ve heard.”

“And yet there I was, sitting at my office space wondering if I’d die writing about baby’s breath.”

That small smile flashed once more, and something about it made a jolting sensation strike at his chest, centered and distinctly pleasant. He resisted the urge to rub at the spot, smooth the feeling away with soft pressure.

Dr. Lecter excused himself shortly after, and Will was left to sit once more, mind spinning. Without the doctor sitting across from him, staring, he was left to turn their words over, blood racing. The Chesapeake Ripper left him his ‘favor’. He’d dropped it on his head, and there he was, sitting in an interrogation room at the FBI again.

Only the Chesapeake Ripper was there too, and Will was absolutely correct; he was closer to Jack Crawford than Jack would ever know. Somehow, that revelation was exciting rather than horrifying in its reality. He wondered if Dr. Lecter had consulted on the case of Mary Mai, considering she’d been his patient.

It didn’t take long for him to report to Jack. Within a few minutes, Brian from the Maestro crime scene was there, setting down documents for Will to sign and explaining the process of his release. Will’s handwriting was a sloppy scrawl, but it was difficult to listen when all that he could think on was facing the Ripper for the first time: no gimmicks, no ruse, no smoke and mirrors.

Just the Chesapeake Ripper. His blood was tingling, spitting. If he was much of a runner, he’d have gone for a run later.

“Dunno how he found you psychologically sound,” Brian was saying as Will stood and stretched. “I’d have you behind bars just for the trouble you alone have caused.

“Guess that’s why he’s the therapist and not you,” Will quipped. “Where’s Jack?”

“He’s in a meeting, but he said that he’d keep in touch.” Keep in touch. It was another way of saying you’d better be sticking around.

The Chesapeake Ripper wasn’t out in the hallway when Will was escorted towards the front desk, nor was he loitering just outside after he had made his phone call and asked Molly to pick him up. Will stood in the cold with the memory of the Ripper playing through his head, over and over and over again. Every time he stood and excused himself, the reel would flicker, turn static then cut short. Every time the ripper walked in the door for the first time and stood with the light from the hallway silhouetting him, there was a moment that Will focused on, despite the bitter cold and the way the tip of his nose was starting to hurt.

The Chesapeake Ripper, for all of his games and his machinations, looked surprised.

Then, the surprise faded, and the game began; it was somehow different, though. Like seeing an old friend and not quite knowing just how to be around them. Seeing him had changed things, and Will wasn’t so upset about being arrested anymore.

Molly met him at the roundabout in front of the building, and she smiled warmly as he climbed in.

“Did you survive your time in county?” she teased.

“I got a few scars from shanks,” he admitted. “A gang tattoo with that poke-and-needle style all the inmates swear by.”

“They let you have any hair trimmers in there? A razor for shaving? You look like you just came off of the set of Castaway.”

She grabbed his jaw and turned his head first one way, then another. He allowed the inspection with good humor, thought of the Ripper maybe watching from a window up above as he told Jack Crawford the sort of person that the Ripper thought him to be. Obviously, his estimation of Will had been good enough to make Jack let him go. Obviously, he’d said enough that Jack couldn’t very well keep him.

He couldn’t play so many games if Will was locked up, could he?

Molly had a way of laughing that warmed from his ears to the tips of his toes. It could have been the heater in the car, but Will didn’t think it was. Caring about Molly Foster was easy. She was the sort of person that made caring second nature, made joking commonplace. Her hair was the perfect hues of blonde, her eyes were the sort that one could call home, and her nose turned up with just enough sass to make her jokes land neatly.

Why she’d ever decided to start dating him again was far beyond Will. He figured she could do much better. She was textbook white picket fence, and while the Ripper certainly thought Will could don such personas –

–well, there was a reason the Ripper first thought they’d be good friends.

Back at her house, they lay sprawled over one another and watched bad television, laughing at the unease of Lifetime movie actors, and for a moment Will wondered just what would happen if he didn’t do what he knew that he had to do next. He wondered what would happen if he just allowed himself to lay there, laughing, and maybe in two years he’d marry her after letting Jack Crawford know just who it was he was gaining psychological insight from.

The moment of hesitation passed, though. He had something important to do.

“How’s work been?” he asked.

“Pretty busy. We’ve begun testing meat for that study I told you about. Some of the results so far have been…well, shitty, actually. Lots of meat claiming strictly beef coming back with turkey or chicken, assorted parts rather than the specific cut they claim it to be.”

“That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“They’re not going to like what they find, but that’s why they came to the lab. They couldn’t trust their own business to give honest answers, so they found someone that would.”

He held his breath, glanced to her freezer where his own packaging of questionable meat lay. When she muted the TV on the commercials, he exhaled slowly.

“I have a favor to ask,” he confessed.

“Will Graham asking favors is a rarity.”

“I have some meat that also comes from a questionable…source,” he began. “You could include it in your study if you wanted, but really I just need to know what it’s from.”

“Did you pick something up from the farmer’s market? I told you that place doesn’t always sell as advertised,” she teased.

Will forced himself to laugh.

“I just have…a suspicion it’s not what it says it is. I know you’re busy, but if you have the time…”

His voice trailed off as she rolled over onto him, and the look she leveled at him was equal parts suspicion and mischief. No tingling sensation, though. No weird pressure in his chest that he willed to rub away. Molly was Molly, and Will Graham was a certifiable ass hole.

Beverly was surely going to agree with him after they caught up.

“If I have free time, I’ll do it. It’s the meat in the freezer, right?” At his nod, she nodded and rested her chin lightly at the dip in his chest. “You’re not making me run tests on human meat, are you?”

He kissed her rather than have to try and brush off a question like that. Hands rested onto her hips, held tight, and they didn’t unmute the TV when the movie came back on. When he kissed her, he wondered if she could taste his lies; if they were rancid, or if they were as sweet as she claimed them to be.

#LiaS scribbles #Hannibal fanfic #hannigram #hannibal au #Dark!Will #Ill Intentions #Journalist!Will #Grey!Will #the Chesapeake Ripper #hannibal x will graham #molly foster #nbc hannibal

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