Chapter Text
The lights in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane were typically kept on a dimmer from 2130 to 0600 to allow for sleep, even if half of them only slept for jags at a time whenever things quieted down. Chilton sometimes ordered for the lights in a given patient's cell to stay on more indefinitely. Will's had once been kept on for thirty-two hours straight, though he knew others had easily beaten that record.
He'd learned over months what those ergonomic florescent lights did to him; they were like a hand ghosting across his skin and prickling the hairs there, or the itch of an uncomfortable blanket. They flickered on slowly but with inescapable heat and brightness, adding their hum to the tones of equipment he could hear giving low, sonar-like beeps in Barney's station—he preferred to think of it as Barney's station, as he was the only tolerable orderly in the place. 'Sounds better than nurse-slash-guard,' was how Orderly Barney Matthews had introduced himself.
Will was feeling that itch again, hearing that hum. His heart rate increased immediately, but for once in the last six months of his life, the cause was something other than trepidation. Will pushed a grim smile into the edge of his pillowcase, bleachy and stiff, and took stock.
The same undershirt with other people's sweat baked into it from repeated cycles through the wash; the pain in his back from sleeping on the cot's lumpy, hard surface, not completely returned to him but threatening; the lights stinging his eyelids as if they were a harsh sun. He blinked his eyes open once he felt capable of it and knew it had been some hours since they'd come on. Barney was passing out breakfast; Will could hear murmuring, the rattling of the meal cart on its ancient wheels, and then the sound of the meal slot clanging shut and locking.
The kick of adrenalin was not quite ready to fade even though Will was accepting his return to a familiar hell.
It was a dream. Or it wasn't. There was no calendar in his cell. Until he got hold of one to determine if five days really had gone by, or just one night, it didn't matter. Just like Hannibal had said, it didn't matter. Will had taken a bet and was resting on it, waiting for its conclusion. He couldn't back out now.
Will rose from the cot mechanically, though it took some convincing to move his limbs without trembling. He was weak, easily weak enough to merit another of Chilton's interventions. Will's arms, usually capable of lugging around a boat motor like a yoke across his shoulders, were atrophying. Food was his weapon; make it yours, he reminded himself when his stomach clenched over his determination to fix himself.
Will didn't know exactly whose voice it was in his head, pushing him upwards. That threw him a little.
I'm not kind enough to wish you well. Picturing the inevitable reunion. Picturing Will Graham waking up in a proper bed, miles from here. All told, ignoring that was easy—he needed all the wellness he could get for himself and had nothing to spare.
Barney finally got to him with the cart. Will hadn't estimated enough time to conceal himself, to lay back down, to pull on his jumpsuit and hope its unflattering bulk covered his lack. But Barney's station with its eagle-eye cameras, and his hourly checks, meant Will was exposed anyway. He breathed to control himself, gentle huffs through his nose.
It doesn't matter what they do to you. Any potential intervention was just a detour. He could stand Barney's questions, his confusion about Will's rapidly shrinking body, and the corners of Chilton's mouth turned down in false concern as he lectured Will on measures taken for his well-being. He was on a narrow path and only had to pay tolls along the way to his destination.
"Hey, Barney," Will said. His throat was gritty with sleep, and he cleared it.
"It's nice to see you again this morning, Mr. Graham," Barney said carefully, standing his usual polite distance from the bars. His gaze was stuck to Will, and like Hannibal's—Lecter's—it missed nothing.
He'd watched Will piss on the security cameras and a few times in person, checked to make sure he was swallowing his meds, brought him soft paperback books even though Will hated nursing and mysteries, Barney's two preferred genres. Gave him impassive looks when Will refused food. Sighed and collected it, uneaten. Gave him little nods when Will managed half of a chicken breast. Of course he'd know. Chilton might take him out of his cell and escort him in hand and ankle cuffs to his office to sit through terrible therapy, but he didn't look at Will. Even when they decreased Chilton's morphine dose and he gained back most of his functioning, such as it was, he didn't see.
Barney saw everything.
"You too," Will said, his tongue practically sticking to the roof of his mouth. "I'm feeling … back to normal."
Barney didn't react to that. His gaze swept Will's cell, noted the uncharacteristically unmade cot, Will's body held stiff so it wouldn't tremble in his boxers and shitty undershirt. "I've got breakfast for you, and some mail," he said when it came back around to Will.
"Thanks," Will said. "Send it through."
A bowl of oatmeal with a dash of something rust colored that was probably cinnamon across the top. His stomach gave an unhappy gurgle, but he picked up the spoon and stirred it once Barney'd locked the slot again.
Will took a mouthful, ran his dry tongue through its lumpy blandness, and swallowed. He stirred again. There was orange juice and tepid water in wrinkled, flimsy paper cups; Will sipped the orange juice and did a very convincing job of not gagging. The back of his mouth watered, so he drank more juice.
"There's another thing," said Barney in the same measured, reasonable tone he'd been using.
"Oh?"
"Dr. Lecter is in a meeting with Dr. Chilton. He's been trying real hard to see you since that morning you … weren't yourself." He shifted, big feet in orthopedic sneakers nearly knocking into the cart. "If he's talking to Dr. Chilton again, I think I'd have a hard time keeping him out of here."
Will nodded. It wasn't a hard leap to make. The other Will—against all fucking odds —had seen the other Lecter. He'd probably had a meltdown. But he was quick enough to keep Lecter away for as long as he could, and knew Barney was the best way to do that. I hope you were better at being me than I was at you, he thought before tucking the information away to examine later.
"You can send him down here," Will said after appearing to mull it over. "After I get dressed."
He hoped he was right and that the jumpsuit would hide the worst of it. It doesn't matter, he told himself again, and picked up the spoon.
--
He stood in the middle of the cell, sweaty fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. No matter what he told himself, his body barely had the strength to remain standing; he couldn't spare much to regulate its natural responses. Will slowed his breathing down again until it was scarcely audible.
Will could hear Lecter's footsteps in the hall, deliberate, designed to tread on his nerves.
When he came into view, Will forgot his sweaty hands and rabbit-thumping heart. He forgot what Lecter's face was supposed to look like, strange and aloof but human and privately kind. He thought he could smell him even from ten feet: good wool, spice, and the leather interior of his Bentley.
It rose up inside of him like a roar.
My name is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I am the Chesapeake Ripper. The Copy Cat Killer. I am other things yet unnamed.
Hannibal's voice crept back into his head next, and Will wanted to shake it off like dirty water or a nosy fly—you aren't the same, I don't need you here—but he presented Will with something useful. "His arrogance is his downfall. Use his brazenness. Use the fact that it's in his self-interest to stay far away from you, but he will not. He cannot."
I'm back here because I can't stay away from Will Graham. I believe I know my own potential folly; it is worth the risk.
He came to stand in front of Graham's cage, the irritant of dealing with Chilton long faded now that he was standing in the halls of reality rather than retracing the more elaborate ones of his own memory. Relief over the outcome implied gratitude—he was not relieved. He was satisfied with his renewed access.
I see him, and I know something is wrong; there was an aberration, and it is no longer there. It's been replaced with something new. There's no use hiding it, Will Graham. I can see the shape of you through your clothes as a tailor would. I know you cannot eat.
Lecter inclined his head politely in greeting. Graham stood silently, queerly, in the middle of his cell, sallow in his blue jumpsuit.
I won't be expecting Graham to know about Mischa. He should not know of her within the meticulous inventory of my mind. I do not know that I am seen. It will needle me. As Graham plants seeds of suggestion in Jack Crawford, in Alana Bloom, in Frederick Chilton, I still won't be able to alleviate it. I will examine each moment for clues—when, precisely, did I tell him I speak Japanese? When did I reveal my mother's name?
The bars were between them, but to him they had all but disappeared. He couldn't tell exactly who he was looking at; Lecter, Graham—rather, himself. Perhaps both; he could be Barney, eating a bagel and keeping an eye on the cameras. It was an uncertainty as to whether the smell of very expensive shampoo was trailing Lecter or somehow emanating from the cell, from Graham's lank curls. Curious.
I will search exhaustively, and I will find nothing.
"Good morning, Will."
When Will answered, he'd forced all the voices to a distant place. It was only him again. There was no vague smile, no inclination of his chin. Nothing that gave him away. Just Will Graham, awake and seeing and with his own architecture of memory to rely on. "Good morning, Dr. Lecter."