Chapter Text
In Will Graham’s expert opinion, Dr. Damien Donovan was the least helpful psychiatrist he’d ever met, and that was saying something.
Will’s weekly court-mandated sessions with Dr. Donovan had been just one requirement on a laundry list in the post-Verger era. He had, initially, refused to have anything to do with the FBI, Jack Crawford, or any other crime-fighting agents and organizations, but that had landed him in hot water as someone who had obviously conspired with a known serial killer, so this was the compromise. Will was allowed to be called in less than twice a month as an independent consultant, he was explicitly not allowed to buy a firearm (they did not account for the ones he already had), and he had to go to weekly sessions with the stupidest mental health professional on the planet.
Originally, Will had wondered why this blustering idiot had been selected. It later occurred to him that all other psychiatrists had developed a (valid) fear that association with Will would make them a target for Hannibal, should he ever escape. Dr. Donovan, by Will’s estimation, didn’t register this threat. Given the chance, Will thought he might bring it to fruition someday, but he hadn’t totally decided.
“So your mother… Passed on?” Dr. Donovan asked him tentatively, his watery, bloodshot blue eyes blinking.
This was, to Will’s recollection, the eighth time he’d had this conversation with this man. “I told you, I didn’t know her.”
“I see, I see…” The man sniffled loudly and Will grimaced internally. “What did she look like?”
“It’s hard to know what someone looks like when you don’t know them.” Will picked at a threat on his sleeve. He didn’t know why he was dressing like this, casual but collared shirts and trousers. He couldn’t quite seem to make himself put on his old duds, the flannels and khakis jammed in the back of his closet. The thread remained the same length, to his dismay. “I was told she looked like me,” he conceded eventually.
That was true, too. His father had said it often, though rarely with anything like affection. He pulled again, the thread unyielding. He wanted to take out his knife and cut it, but he figured even Dr. Donovan was smart enough to be intimidated by a known killer with a knife and a surly disposition.
“How did that make you feel?”
Will wanted to scream, but didn’t.
It had been ten months since the Verger breakdown, since Will nearly had his face removed, since the commencement of the court case--
Since Hannibal’s surrender.
Ten months into an eighteen-month agreement of meetings with this man. Will had discussed his mother and father extensively, his education, his upbringing, his time at the FBI, his relationship with the Lord, no stone had gone unturned except for one.
Dr. Donovan did not mention Hannibal. Conveniently, neither did Will.
Because Hannibal occupied at least seventy percent of Will’s thoughts at any given time, not bringing him up was difficult. In fact, Hannibal was the only thing he wanted to talk about. The people around him, however, were not worthy conversation partners, not about him. Everybody wanted to reduce him into something neat and classifiable. Reduce both of them, actually.
Will berated himself. He couldn’t stop doing that. He would think about himself and Hannibal as a unit, as a both or an usor a them. Hannibal’s union with him was so inextricable that, even ten months removed from his influence, Will could still hear him in his thoughts. Absent-mindedly, Will ran his fingers along the scar on his forehead.
In the beginning, people had asked if it bothered him. Alana, misguided but well-meaning, had gently told him, “if you wear your hair down, it won’t even be visible.” And he knew, then, that he was tainted.
He must be, must be spoiled and rotten and ruined, because the thought of other people ignoring it, of himself ignoring it, was disgusting to him. He had no compunction about putting Hannibal away, nothing as clear-cut as regret could exist in relation to Hannibal. That said, the knowledge that he had been seen, that someone, even someone like Hannibal, could understand him, could accept him, was not something he ever wanted to forget. He had refused to put Mederma on the scar, had left it unbandaged and stark so that he would always have this reminder.
“Well,” Dr. Donovan said, apparently unsatisfied. “We don’t have to talk about that today. Why don’t we talk about your friends?”
“All my friends?” Will stared at him blankly.
“Yes, why don’t you tell me about your relationships?”
Will almost smirked, leaning back in the chair. “Where would I even start?”
The thing was that every relationship Will had in his entire life was now meaningless. No one knew him, and he had been prepared to accept that, had been prepared to exist behind a well-crafted mask until he eventually died and went to Hell, probably. The mask had been comfortable and enduring, it fit every contour of his face.
After meeting Hannibal, however, after taking breaths and living in the absence of the mask, he was no longer able to convincingly don it. So every relationship he had either felt incredibly forced or simply imploded within a few weeks of Hannibal’s surrender.
He did not want to re-enter gameplay with Hannibal Lecter. He was very clear on that. Will did not condone Hannibal’s actions, there were a great many things for which had not forgiven him, and he was almost certain that part of him despised Hannibal and took very real joy in seeing him suffer.
A small, quiet, childlike part of him, however, was still sitting next to Hannibal at the Uffizi gallery, genuinely smiling at the feeling of the mask being lifted. It felt young and clumsy but almost disarmingly delighted.
Most of all, Will thought, it felt like a fantasy.
“We could begin with your relationship with your father,” Dr. Donovan said mildly, as though it didn’t pivot Will’s fantasies into being more of the therapist-killing variety.
Will scowled and opened his mouth to answer, but his phone vibrated before he could. “Sorry, I think it’s Jack,” Will told him, pulling it out of his pocket.
Jack Crawford: New case for you.
As much as he appreciated the interruption of this asinine line of dialogue, Will did not particularly want another case.
Will Graham: none of you can figure it out ?
The response came almost immediately.
Jack Crawford: Be at Quantico ASAP for briefing.
Then, a follow-up.
Jack Crawford: And less of the attitude.
Despite himself, Will huffed a laugh. Jack Crawford was, for all of his many flaws, consistent and unflagging. This had the additional benefit of requiring his immediate departure from the psychiatry session.
“Sorry, I have to go.” Will stood, shouldering his bag and jamming his phone into the pocket of his trousers.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to brush your mental health under the table,” Dr. Donovan said hesitantly.
“Dr. Donovan,” Will said, feigning admonishment, “lives are at stake.” And then he strode out of the room at the fastest reasonable velocity.
Will had been called into about eight cases since Hannibal’s surrender. Each one had been… Underwhelming. Jack had lost his confidence, in Will’s opinion, because he should’ve been able to solve every one of them without Will’s assistance. All of that notwithstanding, Jack was one of the only people even tangential to friendliness that he had left, and he had suffered enough without Will forsaking him.
He drove to Quantico in silence. Most of his life had been in silence in the preceding several months. He had pared down his pack of dogs to only Winston and Buster before sailing to Europe to retrieve Hannibal, and he had decided that continuing to move the rest of them from home to home was unkind when he returned, so now his existence had the soundtrack of only two dogs barking.
He loved music, but, cliche as it was, every song reminded him of Hannibal. Or, worse, of their relationship. Even the cloying, meaningless drivel on the radio made him think of the two of them, of the life they could’ve had, of how Hannibal was locked away.
Sometimes, to fill the void or pass the time or… Something like that, Will would allow himself to consider what he would say to Hannibal if he were there. He never ventured into real discussions, never dipped his toe into the pools of Abigail or Bedelia or Mischa or the smile on Will’s belly. All of that would hurt much too badly. Instead, he imagined that they would talk about silly things. Will would relay tales of Dr. Donovan’s unendurable therapy, Hannibal would mock him relentlessly and probably kill him. Or maybe they could talk about beauty, about God, about the abstract concepts of good and evil. They could talk about sex, sexuality, instinct and learned behavior, Hannibal’s thoughts on that would no doubt be fascinating.
There was a question that Will was very specifically not allowed to think about, under punishment of a very real tailspin. Do I miss him? The words ran through his head, unacknowledged, like a stream. They were not pressing, but they were constant. And, streamlike still, they were eroding something away. Forming grooves, forming synaptic patterns and connections that Will wasn’t yet engulfed in but would someday be inescapable.
Pulling up to the non-education area at Quantico was miserable. Pulling into the Visitors parking lot was worse.
Walking into that building always felt a little like losing time, like he couldn’t quite figure out where he was or what he was meant to be doing. He still taught, though that was on a different part of the campus. He did his best to spend as little time as possible in the classroom. It brought back too much. It also, oddly, didn’t bring back anything. Will felt, whenever he sat in his lecture theater, that he should be aching for the days of the past, before all the bloodshed and loss. He felt faraway, though, like he was a different man and that was a different life. And that disparate feeling was almost worse than grief, because he couldn’t recognize it.
There was so much, these days, that he didn’t recognize.
“Will!” Jack Crawford thundered into the lobby the way he thundered everywhere. Will couldn’t begrudge him that, it was almost comforting in its familiarity. “You ready for this?”
Will blinked at him, unimpressed. “Ready as I have been for all of them,” which is to say, no.
“This one’s different, this one…” Bolstered by the power of his moral compass, Jack looked almost eager at the thought of a real criminal to chase. “This one might be a little… Familiar.”
They walked, side by side, toward the lab, Jack wringing his hands in what looked an awful lot like excitement and Will looking askance and trying not to let his mind wander. “Familiar how?”
“You’ll see.” Jack clapped him on the shoulder, and Will felt himself tense slightly. “Did I pull you away from something?”
“Nothing worthwhile,” Will grumbled, following him into the lab and then stopping immediately.
It was familiar. Sickeningly, painfully familiar.
On the board were six pictures of boys. Young men, really, or something nearing it. They looked to be seventeen. Dark hair, freckled, wind-chapped skin, bright blue eyes. A blown up map of the eastern part of the US covered the other half of the board, six pins in it throughout West Virginia and the Northeastern part of Virginia.
“Same height, same weight. Four missing, two confirmed dead.”
“Three dead,” Will muttered.
Jack nodded, unfazed. “Probably.” He pointed at the first picture, which was connected to a string near the Shenandoah National Park. “Adam Benett went missing two weeks ago, then came,” he pointed to the next one nearby, “Benjamin Holmes, who turned up slashed to death with a knife near Charleston, a few organs missing. Calen McAlister goes missing next, then Dylan Phillips’ body is found, similarly slashed up, missing his liver and lungs. Now, two more boys are missing, all from this area, all with this same profile.” He pointed to the two westernmost pins. “Eric Hornman and Frank Pickerington.”
Will stared at their faces, so familiar to him and yet so unsettling, then looked over the map. “One of those two is dead.” He stepped away, thoroughly disturbed. This contained the worst of some of his least favorite cases, and a powerful reminder of the thing he had resolutely committed not to think about. “Any leads on connections?”
“Not one,” Jack said, and it seemed as though the blood was rushing through him at a faster pace than ever before. “So, can I count on you?”
Will wanted to say no. Needed to say no. And yet, the idea of this happening again, of the suffering that Abigail had endured at the hands of her father, at the hands of him, he couldn’t let it happen again. If it happened again, all of this was for nothing. Mutely, with the resignation of a man stepping up to the gallows, Will nodded.
Jack smiled, which, for him, was downright effusive. “Do you think one of these boys is his golden ticket?”
Brushing over the map with his fingertips, Will hummed noncommittally. “Depends,” he said, remembering his words from what felt like eons ago. “He could be wrapping things up.” He shook his head, pushing away from the board and digging around in his pack. “Or maybe he’s just getting started.”
“Well, that’s why I need you,” Jack said. “We couldn’t have got Garrett Jacob Hobbs without you, you’ll get this one, too.”
Technically, Will almost said, he hadn’t been clear on the Garrett Jacob Hobbs picture until he had Hannibal’s help. Will was good for the Lost Boys, to be sure, but this felt more complicated than that. Too many names, and, as he looked at the two slashed corpses photographed on the board, too many subtle variations.
Will tore the photos off the board, reorganizing them until they were to his liking, then he let the pendulum swing.
Benjamin Holmes lay supine in front of him near the bank of the Kanawha River. He had struggled, but not much. Almost as though…
Almost as though he thought we were friends.
It swung again.
He walked next to Ben, shoulders bumping in that boyish camaraderie that would dissipate in the proceeding years. He felt… Nervous. No, not nervous. Unconvinced. And yet, he knew what he had to do.
Like a soon-to-be killer in Of Mice and Men, he directed Benjamin Holmes to look out into the Kanawha State Forest, his own hands shaking relentlessly.
He slit his throat, first. This boy, this… This peer didn’t need to suffer, that wasn’t a part of it. Once Ben was bleeding, his eyes losing their light rapidly, he cut him again, trembling but practiced. Rehearsed.
When it was over, he felt relieved. He knelt by Ben’s body as his blood drained into the Kanawha. “It’s over now,” he told him. “It’s all done.”
And when he stood, he got the distinct impression that he wasn’t telling the truth.
Will blinked forcefully, the sensation that he was missing something itching at the back of his head. “He’s nervous,” Will said. “The killer, he doesn’t… He knows what he’s doing, but he’s not sure he wants to be doing it.”
“Is he a friend of these boys? A teacher, a superior? Neither of these boys has any evidence of sexual trauma, is he a predator?”
“No, no, it’s not like that.” Will scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s… He thinks it’s a kindness, somehow. Or an act of mercy. It’s not about power.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed, seeming as perplexed as Will was. “What’s it about then?”
Will shook his head. “Let me see the other one.”
“No.”
He blinked. “No? Do you want it solved or not?”
“Of course I want it solved. But I’m not going to be responsible for letting you spiral again.”
Will huffed. “I didn’t spiral, I-”
“Take a break,” Jack interrupted firmly. “Go get a sandwich or something. Matter of fact,” he pulled a crumpled up ten dollar bill from his pocket and shoved it into Will’s palm. “Why don’t you get me one?”
“Get your own damn sandwich, I’m not your PA.”
Jack patted him on the shoulder, looking more than a little pleased with himself. He snatched the picture of the other dead teenager and waved it meaningfully. “I’ll be with this in my office when you get back. Anything but tuna is fine with me.” Then he turned and went into his office, closing the door behind him.
Will scowled, stomping out of the room and nearly mowing down Price.
“Hey, Will, you’re back!” He said, as though they were friends at all.
Will schooled his features into neutrality. “In a new, demoted role,” he grumbled.
Unmoved, Price nodded smilingly. “Well, it’s good to see you. We’ve been needing some fresh meat around here. Proverbially, of course. In a literal sense, we get an awful lot of meat. Though the freshness of it-”
“Okay, well, see you,” Will interrupted, walking out of the room and down to the cafeteria. This was the height of indignity, going to order Jack Crawford’s sandwich because he couldn’t be trusted to look at too many pictures in a row. Needless to say, Will procured Jack a tuna sandwich with extra tuna and reluctantly got himself a bag of chips.
It was not lost on him that the case was pushing him around, mentally. In fact, it was pushing him in the exact direction he explicitly did not want to go, which was toward thoughts of Hannibal. And yet, all of this reminded him so much of the Hobbs case, of being seen, being understood enough to be led, to be helped. He didn’t know if he should be more ashamed of the fact that he was yearning or the fact that he was thinking more about the yearning than the actual facts of the case.
He miserably hauled his spoils up to Jack’s office, presenting him with his tuna sandwich with a truly petulant expression.
“Pretty sure the tuna’s only five dollars,” Jack said, unpacking it and grimacing.
“So?”
Jack almost smiled. “I gave you ten."
“I need the extra money for my mental health.” He held out his hand for the other picture, leaving the office to stand alone in the conference room and letting the pendulum swing once again.
It felt the same. Why did it feel the same? It should’ve been easier or harder or at least different in some way. Instead, he walked alongside Dylan Phillips with almost identical emotions, the same pitying amiability, the same regretful acceptance. They were in a different location this time, no river to be seen. There were mountains, though, cradling them like a bassinet. For a moment, he felt too young to be doing this. Who was he to-
The panic subsided. Almost as though derailed by an external force, a train knocked off-track by an avalanche. This was the right thing, no matter how badly his hands were shaking. He had practiced these movements, he knew what to do. “Beautiful out through there, isn’t it?” He said to Dylan gently. “The way the sun shines through the trees.”
Dylan looked where he was pointing, seemingly at ease. He never saw it coming, he never needed to. The movements were rehearsed once Dylan fell, unmoving, to the ground.
Herein was the first difference between this kill and the other one: this one was satisfying. This was the right thing, the worst was over. This… This was kindness.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Will told Jack. “Even killers with set, comfortable routines feel some differences between attacks, let alone someone new to the game. He should either be getting more comfortable or less comfortable, this stagnation is… It doesn’t make sense.”
Jack nodded. “Are we sure he’s just starting out?”
“The movements of the knife are too shaky, if he’d been doing this for years, he wouldn’t feel so nervous.”
“Are the locations similar?”
Will pondered that for a moment. “Yes and no. The locations aren’t… They’re not symbolic. One kill wasn’t near the river and the other in the mountains for any particular reason, it’s not about that. It’s about…” He rolled his lips between his teeth thoughtfully. “Sometimes, when people are planning to put their dog, they’ll take ‘em to a beach. See the ocean, chase a ball in the waves, dig around in the wet sand. It’s like that. Like…”
“Like taking your sick loved one to the quays of Italy so they can die with a memory of beauty,” Jack finished, and Will sucked in a sharp breath.
“Jack, I-”
He held up his hand to stop him. “The killer thinks this is kind.”
Still wrong-footed, Will nodded.
“We need to look into the history of these boys. See if there’s anything about them that indicates that death would be preferable to life.” Will went to follow Jack and was stopped immediately. “Not you.”
“What?”
“We can do our history searches without you, Will. Go home.”
Will’s brow furrowed. “But-”
“Go home.”
Irked, Will turned on his heel and stormed back out the door, sinking into his Volvo with a slam. He hated being fucking handled like this. He wasn’t unstable. He had made a decision, just because it wasn’t one Jack liked didn’t make him mentally ill.
He missed Beverly, he missed the rest of his dogs, he missed Alana, he missed--
Whatever. At least he had gotten out of stupid therapy and now he could just go home. Because he was, apparently, at least sort of a masochist, he allowed himself a conversation with Hannibal on the way home. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Will repeated out loud.
What doesn’t make sense about it?
“He shouldn’t feel this identical emotion for two similar kills only a few days apart. Killers are people, they grow, they change over time, even minutely.”
It was weird to imagine Hannibal in his passenger seat, in the beginning. He had never been driving when Hannibal was around. Now, there was a comforting familiarity to it. Perhaps he doesn’t remember.
Will shook his head. “I don’t get the feeling it’s that. He feels… Rehearsed.”
Jack is right to say it’s eerily similar to the Hobbs case. Will ignored that. You told Jack that the motive is not power, not even selfish gain. What do you think it is?
“It’s love,” Will said, the realization hitting him as the words came out of his mouth. “Not for these boys specifically, but for what they represent.”
What do they represent?
“Hell if I know.” Will pondered it a while longer, letting it rattle around in his head. “I don’t know if he loves one of the victims and these boys are stand-ins like Abigail, or if it’s something else.”
How did you reach a conclusion about this in the Hobbs case? Will could feel the smugness radiating off of him like the sun itself.
“You know how.”
Shame you won’t be able to access that sort of insight again, Hannibal told him, feigning sorrow. I’m sure you’ll find it, though.
“Fuck off.”
We can only hope you manage to do so before too many more bodies drop. Parents torn from their children, wishing desperately that you could give them some hope like the Redeemer himself. Will it be harder to tell the ones whose sons are dead? Or the ones whose sons are ruined?
Will frowned, banishing the thought of Hannibal for now. It didn’t matter, the words had been said. This case would be devastating, doubly so for Will because he knew exactly how it would play out, in the end. Had witnessed it firsthand, been torn asunder by similar circumstances.
For a painful, burning, fraction of a second, he considered consulting Hannibal. He discarded the thought immediately, but the time it had been in his brain had been long enough to brand him. The childish, naive part of him rejoiced at the thought. Will kicked it on his way by and smiled when it cried out.
It was nearly nine by the time he got home. He let Buster and Winston out to run while he cooked their dinner, then while he half-heartedly assembled his own. He sat on the porch, the November air stinging his cheek a little. Winston trotted over to him, resting his head on Will’s thigh. “You think I’m redeemable, Winston?”
Winston’s dark, wet eyes remained fixed on him.
“Yeah, me neither.”
At four in the morning, Will received a phone call, which he resolutely ignored. The phone rang again as soon as it had stopped and Will sighed, rolling over and picking up. “What, Jack?”
“Frank Pickerington’s body was found on a trail in the Shenandoah Mountains in Pendleton County, West Virginia.”
Will squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself not to think of Abigail. “Same cuts?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Same shakiness to the cuts?”
“Yes,” Jack said, sounding, for all the world, like he wasn’t tired. “There’s more.”
Will sighed. “What is it?”
“Three of the boys have histories indicative of abuse. CPS calls, complaints to the police from neighbors, charges from teachers about questionable home lives.”
“Which ones?”
“So far, Adam, Benjamin, and Dylan. We haven’t finished a deep dive on the other three.”
Will nodded pointlessly to the empty room. “I can be there by six.”
“Hold off until eight,” Jack commanded. “We’ll finish our histories by then.”
“Jack, I’m-” Jack hung up the phone and Will sank back into bed.
He had a feeling. A terrible, premonitory feeling, that, before the end of this, he would have to contact Hannibal. Whether it was fear or wishful thinking, he didn’t know.
When he fell asleep that night, he dreamed of Hannibal in his passenger seat, smiling that same smug grin.
Will drove to Quantico feeling apprehensive. He did not speak to the spectral apparition of his white whale in the passenger seat, nor did he acknowledge it in any way. He most certainly did not turn on the radio or even allow himself to think His name.
When he arrived, he had managed a level of repression that rivaled even that of his childhood. Briefly, he wondered if he should be proud. He knew Hannibal would explicitly not be.
“We’ll debrief on the way to the scene, okay?” Jack apprehended him almost immediately upon his arrival.
Will nodded and allowed himself to be dragged out to Jack’s black SUV, falling into it despairingly. “How long has he been dead?”
“Less than forty-eight hours, they say.” Jack absently flicked on the radio, which Will quickly turned off.
At his incredulity, Will said, “sorry, headache. Not,” he intercepted, “the encephalitis kind.”
Jack looked at him sideways but said nothing. “He’s cut up just like the other two.”
Will rolled his lips between his teeth. “Are we able to tell, post-mortem, if they’re scared?”
“What?”
“When they die, are the boys scared?”
“I’ll have Price and Zeller look into it.”
Will hummed, looking out the window.
“Are you?” Jack said, breaking the silence.
“Am I what?”
“Scared?” At Will’s questioning look, he sighed. “This is a lot like the Hobbs case, which I know still weighs on you. It’s also got elements of the Lost Boys, elements of Eldon Stammets, elements of-”
“I’m fine,” Will interrupted. “Murders are like other murders.”
“What about the fact that the Hobbs case is what got you involved with Hannibal?”
“You’re what got me involved with Hannibal,” Will said, less-than-kindly.
A tense silence hung in the car. “That’s true,” Jack conceded quietly. “Is working with me hard, Will?
Despite himself, Will chuckled. “Working with you is hard, but it’s got nothing to do with Hannibal. Ask Price and Zeller, they’d say the same thing.”
Jack smiled. “Believe me, I don’t have to ask.”
As a compromise, Will pressed the button to turn the radio back on, Shiny, Happy People filling the air of the car with something less stifling. He let it play for a few minutes, then spoke. “I don’t blame you, Jack.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong to.”
“Well, I don’t.” Will rested his head against the car window. “Wake me when we get there.”
“I always do,” Jack said wistfully.
The unfortunate thing about bodies turning up along the Shenandoah Mountain trail meant that, to get to the body, one had to hike the trail. Ordinarily, Will loved hiking, felt rejuvenated by it, even. Today, it was exhausting. Somehow, the lustre of the hike wore off when a dead teenager was at the end of it.
Frank Pickerington’s body lay prone on the ground, again near a scenic overlook. The slices across his body were shaky, but mimicked the ones of the other two victims. Jack cleared the scene and Will knelt by the body. The pendulum swung.
Frank was more apprehensive than he’d been told to expect. He kept looking over his shoulder, though his gaze was fixed on something in the distance behind them. He was, apparently, more attuned to those with murderous intent, no matter how merciful the kill was.
Merciful. He wondered, was it really mercy? All of this practice, all of the planning and… Could he do this? Was this right?
“It is beautiful,” Frank conceded softly. “I wonder what it looks like when it storms.”
Was it right? He didn’t know. But it was necessary, he knew that much. He plunged the knife into Frank’s neck from behind, catching him in his arms, which he wasn’t really meant to do. Gently, lovingly, he laid Frank down, shushing into his ear. “It’s over, the worst is over, it’s okay,” he repeated, drawing the rehearsed lines across his chest and abdomen with the knife.
He wondered, briefly, if he was lying. Nevertheless, he had done what he needed to.
Will groaned, frustrated. “It doesn’t make any sense!” He repeated for what felt like the fiftieth time in the last day.
“What doesn’t?”
“He feels the same! It’s like these other kills never even happened!”
“Tell me what happens, Will,” Jack commanded. “What happens?”
Will sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands. “He believes it’s a mercy, a kindness. Or, at least, part of him does. They come to these beautiful places--”
“Why?”
“What?”
Jack wrung his hands. “Why do they come to these places?”
“I told you, it’s-”
“Not why are they brought here,” Jack amended. “Why do they come?”
Will blinked at him, then looked over the scene. “They’re lured here.”
The Earth was collapsing beneath him, he thought. He would die here, in the Shenandoah Mountainside, because this couldn’t be happening. Surely the trumpets would sound soon and the horsemen would come and drag him down to his final destination.
Will rolled his lips between his teeth. “Adam and Calen and Eric aren’t dead. Or, at least, not all of them are dead.”
“Where are they, Will?”
Will shook his head, feeling almost tearful. “They’re baitworms. They’re just like Abigail, they’re… They’re bringing the victims to these places. Gaining their trust, bonding with them, they’re…”
“And then what? Someone kills them? A father, a teacher, what?”
“I don’t…” Will trailed off. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do this.”
Jack shook his head. “Will, you’re not weak, you can do this.”
Will backed up until his spine scratched against some tree bark. “They’re lures. Or at least one of them is a lure, maybe the others are dead.”
“That’s why they feel the same? Because the same person is doing it? Or because they don’t remember?”
“I don’t know!” Will snapped. “I need to go somewhere. I…”
“Tell me what they’re doing!”
Will scowled. “I don’t know. I need to think.”
“Then think.”
“Not here,” Will said firmly. “I want to go home.”
Jack huffed, deflating. “We’re a long way from home.”
Will barely heard him. He remembered the blood on his glasses, the gunfire in the Hobbs’ kitchen. He remembered kneeling frantically over Abigail, over this innocent caught in the crossfire. He remembered Hannibal’s hand atop his own, then replacing his to stop the bleeding. See? And, nauseatingly, Will saw.
More than that, he remembered Abigail, herself. He remembered her trying to find a way to fit into society, trying to trust him, trying to find a person to be. He remembered buying her the fishing gear, trying desperately to relate to her, to let her know that someone understood. He remembered the sickening satisfaction of Hannibal’s hand on his shoulder, saying, we are her fathers now.
Absently, as though completely removed from his body, Will sat in the passenger seat of the car. He didn’t care if they left in five minutes or five hours, he was gone. All he could think about was her, and Him, and the life they could’ve had. The final victim of Garrett Jacob Hobbs.
Jack drove them back to Quantico and Will drove home in a blur. Through the blur, a chemical reaction began. Where he felt a sort of apathetic despondence sizzled and burbled into anger, white-hot, burning rage. The apparition of Hannibal was right, every boy involved in this would be ruined or dead. The dead ones would at least have the peace of innocence, but the ones who were luring would forever know that they had forsaken something imperative to humanity. They were ruined, like Will.
Will let the dogs out and stared at his property, imagining the life Abigail could’ve led. She should’ve gone to college, gotten drunk and sang bad karaoke or made the honor roll or joined a frisbee team. She should’ve had meaningless fights about a dorm room or taken advantage of a meal plan, then become some nine-to-five worker who Will saw on certain weekends for fishing. Or maybe she could’ve outgrown all of it and never seen Will or Hannibal again. She could lead a boring life at a boring job, marry a boring spouse and have boring, happy kids. Shiny, happy people, indeed.
The thought was excruciating. Will did not stop it.
He imagined these boys, seventeen and dumb, on the brink of escaping apparently abusive homes for the safe, challenging respite of adulthood. Entire lives snuffed out like candle wicks, by death or by corruption.
Jack was wrong. Will didn’t want to solve this case. He wanted to punish this criminal. Jail was not sufficient, there was no sufficient punishment. Will would find the perpetrator of these crimes and kill him slowly. He would disavow him of any notion of mercy or kindness, convince him that he was unimaginably cruel and then tear him to shreds.
The man was clever, though. There had been no evidence thus far. The longer this went on, the more boys’ lives would be ruined or taken, and Will couldn’t get a firm enough grasp on his MO to stop him.
He needed Hannibal. Not just for guidance but for real, physical assistance. Problematically, Hannibal was in the BSHCI under maximum security, but Will was unafraid. As he accepted it, allowed himself to think His name, to acquiesce to the inevitability of his return to Will’s life, he felt a state of cool equanimity. This, he was certain, was the right thing.
He would free Hannibal, they would kill this man, and then… Will didn’t know what, then. He figured the first two steps of the plan would take long enough that he could decide in the meantime.
Hannibal needed to be freed. Jack would never go for it. Jack would never accept that a case like this mandated Hannibal’s assistance, not when it was functionally unrelated to the Chesapeake Ripper, himself.
Will knew what he had to do.