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[ It's not something that really ever becomes routine, it doesn't matter how often he wakes up someplace strange and uncharted. The voice on the line sounds about as scattered as he feels. ]

My name is Will Graham, it's- [ He's pulling back his sleeve to look for a watch that's not there. ] I don't have the time. I don't- I don't have the time.

[ Hang on, don't get too lost. ]

It's not clear to me exactly where I am, but- [ a dry laugh ] you probably already knew that. This isn't even my phone. But you probably knew that too.

[ He's missing details. He's missing plenty. His voice trails off for a short while before he can get his bearings enough to speak again, and even then it's almost unconsciously. ] I don't know. I don't know.

[ It's as if the fact that he has no idea sparks him back into the present. His voice grows more composed, if somewhat cracked. ] So if you're hearing this, if anyone is hearing this - [ is anyone hearing this? ] - any singular indication will be key.

[ Another beat. ]

I feel as though I've strayed a long, long way from home.

[ The air goes dead, and then so does the line. ]

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Hi, Daddy.

[Which, of course, she's said once before. To help cement Hannibal in a lie; to protect herself, most of all. This time, it's clear she's joking, even if it's not a kind joke - even if the streak of cruelty in her voice is strong.]

[She drops it, after a moment. She doesn't think she's angry at him. (Maybe she is. This is an impossible situation.)]

Everyone's hearing this.

[And, vaguely reproachful,] What did you do?

[ There's very few people in the world to whom those two words, and that voice - where that combination would carry any significance. Of course it does, it's a voice that's haunted him for long enough. It's a voice that makes his hair stand on end, more over. ]

You're -

[ As if he thought he was disoriented before. Even the skeptic in him seems to viscerally accept - or wants to accept - the idea that this isn't some extension of a cruel joke. So his voice comes out in a breath, confused, heart in his throat all over again in an entirely different way: ]

Abigail?

Oh, Will.

[Abruptly she feels wretched. Look at him. He's so lost, and she knows - knows like she knows the inside of her own eyelids - that this place will do its best to ruin him. She should give him a moment. Let him breathe.]

[The last time she saw him, he scared her so much. Now she's scaring him, just by existing. It's power, but without control. She doesn't like it.]

Will, it's not a dream. You're not crazy. And I'm still dead.

Where are you? Tell me what you see.

[See.]

[ See, that something in his head echoes equally and instantly, and he waves it off just as quickly.

I'm pretty crazy, says a similar kind of something else, the part of him that just wants to laugh hysterically, overwhelmingly, that he's even being put through this.

It's with a slower sink in his chest that everything starts really soaking itself into the fabric of his mind, she's dead. He's dead. She's dead. She was killed and then she was -

He might be sick on the floor, but instead he parrots the same information he already has; automatically, faintly: ]

Level, uh - Level Two, Room Five, don't - [ Actually, don't come here. He doesn't need her seeing his new accommodations. ] Where are you?

[Don't, he says, and she instinctively wants to, just to be contrary - but she holds back, gnawing her lip and thinking. Thinking. Does she want him to see her room? At least the mask is gone, the one dillon brought her - at least Ben has that now. But there are only so many places they can go as inmates.]

[She wonders if seeing that the asylum is as close as she can conceptualize of home will shock him, or if he won't be surprised at all.]

Level eight, room nineteen. [A beat.] I have snacks. You look like you might pass out.

[Admittedly she has snacks because she doesn't trust the food around her sometimes - not anymore - but that's neither here not there.]

[ The camera should be more flustering - it's not as if it's something he'd purposefully turn on, and he could still cover the lens in a huff. He doesn't do anything for a moment. He might still pass out. He hasn't decided yet. ]

I've seen a ghost.

[ He says it so lightly, amazed, as if he still doesn't quite believe it. ]

I just - [ No, he can't fall into this. More firmly: ] Need an aspirin. [ As if that's better explanation. ]

Give me - Give me a minute.

[ He requests it more carefully than he would anyone else, but the call cuts off abruptly. Time to think, is what he needs, time to walk and think. He finds his way there quickly, and tries to adjust just as quickly, but he can't make himself any promises if he sees her face actual and in person. ]

[She sits on the edge of her bed when he hangs up. He is delicate, in a clumsy way. She is irritated, in a tender way. There are too many contradictions to be borne here, and it's setting her teeth on edge. She wants him to hold her hand again. She wants to scream.]

[Instead, she pulls down her box of crackers and sets it on her desk, then nibbles a few to push the nerves aside. When she imagines that five minutes have passed, she pushes her door ajar and waits outside, staring up and down the hallway.]

[Will says he's seen a ghost. She wonders how long it is that she's been dead. She wonders what has happened to him, what monsters he's seen. She wonders what he's become.]

[There is a song stuck in her head, Ein Männlein steht im Walde, and the scent of rosehips. She is not wearing her scarf. She hasn't worn a scarf in months.]

[ His walk slows as soon as he sees her, eyes strangely riveted, and he even feels a bit paled with that. She's there and she's in one piece and his hands find themselves fidgeting.

He adjusts his glasses, unaware that he's actually stopped in the middle of the hallway for a solid few seconds. You're not crazy, and I'm still dead, they both seem so mutually exclusive. He sees Abigail and the combination therein feels as though a smoldering fire were extinguished within him. He's dead, she's dead, he's dead she's dead he's dead -

Oh.

He makes his way over finally, hovering again (more briefly) a few steps from her but settling into the place next to her with a appraising kind of look. Interpreting the evidence. ]

I'm, um.

[ Maybe he should have practiced. Words fail him and his eyes even manage to catch onto hers for a few confident seconds before they skirt again. Briefly to the scar, not that he's trying. See. He's overcome with an inexplicable urge to hold her head in his hands as if to determine its weight and circumference, its reality in his palms. He'd feel both ears beneath either hand and he'd see her two eyes and he'd know, in his heart, that she was inherently unsafe here. ]

I'm really very glad to see you.

[This, at least, is satisfying. He's missed her. She can see that in every movement he makes, every one he fails to make. She's missed him, too, only it's - complicated. She did not bother to hide their conversation from Hannibal, because she knew he'd assume it. Because she didn't want to seem like a coward.]

[She thinks she can feel him standing between them, smiling at her, smiling at him. A double-faced monster, the guardian at the door of death. She doesn't want this. She wants to just see Will. (See.) But there's something more here. Jealousy. Anger. Violence.]

[And something more simplistic, too, that makes her do what he can't and reach out. Her fingers brush his cheeks lightly, testing to see if he's real, is he, is he, and - once convinced - she takes his head in her hands and holds him still, searching his face even if he won't meet her eyes.]

[Will is very glad to see her. She smiles, and there are tears in her eyes, and she loves him so much.]

I'm glad to see you, too.

[See? She is real. Her fingers are cold, but she is real. She is afraid, but she is real.]

It's all okay.

[She has to laugh at herself - nothing's okay - but maybe a little more okay, now. Maybe.]

[ He inhales when she reaches out, and doesn't quite exhale again until both hands are at his face - the breath that does come out is jagged, and unsteady, and he can feel some greater facade within him begin to fail. Abigail Hobbs feels much more real than most of his daydreams, a solid presence that he can't deny.

Whether he's dead or she's alive, whether he's sane (laughable) or crazy (more reconcilable); he knows a preference he has across the board, but it doesn't matter much what his opinion counts for when she's a consistent presence right there in front of him. His jaw keeps shaking, that's if he's not reflexively clenching it, his breathing gets slightly more labored, because he's trying very hard not to follow her right suit on that whole crying thing.

His gaze meets Abigail's again. With her hands grasping his head as they are, he's a bit forced to - drawn to, rather - and at once he can feel that hot kind of feeling behind his eyes anyway. ]

It's okay?

[ His hands seek out her wrists, grasping loosely. Fingers right up against her pulse point. I thought I killed you once upon a time. Dead, not dead; when he considers it, his nightmares feel real like this too. ] In a best-case scenario - [ Well, she's been here. He wonders for how long the people here (person person) might've gotten to sink their proverbial claws into her. Never mind.

It's not just that he can't objectively interpret this. It's also that everything's started feeling instinctively right as soon as the dead started walking right into his arms. ]

I don't think I'm, uh - [ His face carefully folds, his eyes skittering away distractedly. ] Supposed to be dead just yet.

[Her heart beats. Her pulse jumps. She gives the illusion of being alive. In theory, she is - again - and can die - again - and has - again. But all that is details. She doesn't want to confuse him. The fact is, she died, and they both know, she thinks, who did it.]

[They know. He knows. He stands between them, though there's no space between them, and he smiles.]

[She rubs Will's cheeks with her thumbs, examining the plane of his cheekbones. If she had stayed with him, would she still be alive? Does she even want to be? Or is this better? The scales have fallen from her eyes. She knows she isn't supposed to think that sort of thing. And yet.]

[A soft frown.] You're not supposed to be dead ever. [Which is a childish response - he's not immortal - but instinctively it feels right. Will took her father. Now he doesn't get to die.]

[She pats his cheek and lets her hands fall, taking his and tugging him gently into her room.]

You should tell me. If it will help. [Or even if it won't. She feels owed, just a little bit.]

[ There's a comfort in familiarity, Will finds fit with at least most of the waking human condition.

Routine, no matter how loosely defined. Waking up as he did, he'd found himself counting the same old cracks in his ceiling, accounted for the same bleach-scrubbed hospital sort of smell, that distinctive whiff one gets, those trying to wipe away the sick, as if possible. The same mattress, the same lumps, the same grime, and the same feeling of solid concrete beneath soled shoes. Despite everything, and especially despite what that room means to him, there had been that familiarity. Down to the last detail, a spotless recreation of his cell, and he'd found some manner of comfort in that, however skewed.

Walking into Abigail Hobbs' room feels like stepping into a graveyard. A comfort just the same, just as a graveyard can be a comfort to those seeking out passed loved ones. Will had never gotten the chance to really, healthily mourn Abigail, funerals and friends and the like. But he's intimately familiar with the sight, just as he was intimately familiar with his cell, and if he's thrown for a moment or two, it's probably something to do with the level of detail.

He should tell her.

It won't help. ]

Abigail -

[ He gives pause, only to remove his glasses, to get a better look around - the other hand is still holding her own, as if the moment he lets go, she will evanesce once more and he'll be left with nothing but a spirit and the ill-conceived notion that he could have prevented it.

They are alone, by definition. He feels eyes on the back of him regardless, nearly always, and it makes him choose his words just as carefully. ]

"You're not crazy, and I'm still dead." [ He quotes her as delicately as possible, and phrases it as though it's a question. ]

Edited 2014-06-08 07:14 (UTC)

[She doesn't let go of his hand. She doesn't want to ever let go of his hand. This is as alone as she'll ever be with him, the best time to tell him secrets, and suddenly she doesn't feel as though she has any. Her best secrets, the ones she uses to shock people and make them feel sympathy for her, are the ones Will already knows. Abruptly she is tongue-tied and shy. She's thought for so long about what she'd say to him if he came here, and now he's here she has no idea where to start.]

[So she squeezes his fingers and looks into his watery, exhausted eyes as though maybe he has an answer for her, like he thinks she has an answer for him.]

Hannibal slit my throat. [A tight shrug, as though trying to shake it off, get it away. This isn't how she usually tells people. Usually she wraps the knowledge around her throat like a cloak. It gives her good posture, bright eyes, great power. Now, she feels powerless, but oddly secure in it, too, as though she and Will are passing back and forth information that could wound them. Holding knives at each other's throats.]

I've been here almost a year. I guess, if - time means anything, here. I don't really think it does.

It'd be a lie, to say there's nothing to be afraid of. But there's nothing more to be afraid of than there is anywhere else.

[She squeezes his hand again and leans her head on his shoulder. Maybe he'll be mad, but it feels like the wind's been knocked out of her, like she's been preparing for this moment for a hundred years and now it's finally come she's done, deflated. Her eyes itch like she's been crying.]

He killed Cassie Boyle. You know that, don't you? Cassie Boyle, and me.

[ A year? A year, and to him it's been weeks.

There were old wounds here, ones to which he'd been mustering the strength to grow scar tissue over - to little avail, the wounds are still fresh, open, and weeping. There was a time when that had made sense to no one but himself, and yet here he stood in the thick of it now. ] A place where Hannibal Lecter stands as though naked before the eyes of the people. [ That escapes him, a thoughtful sound to his throat somewhere in all that tightness. ] I have - often wondered what such a world might look like.

[ Evidently, it's a ship. Evidently, it's here, he's here, and that reckoning that he called for once upon a time seems endlessly more complicated when it's on display to him like this. There are too many elements as of yet uncalled for. But he can't allow himself to feel too powerless, especially not when he's found himself - inexplicably - in a position of some (any) authority here. In fact, Abigail might stand at the forefront of those off-putting elements, as she solidly seems to have in some way or another for some time now.

He knows he's not doing well enough, and his face folds; her head stays on his shoulder. ]

I thought I'd killed you.

[ He begins to sort through his thoughts individually, sifting as though through old mail and picking out what's best, interesting, appropriate. ]

I almost did, it - was a light shining in a very dark place. That is - it tried to guide me, but my eyes weren't burned for looking.

[ But that's not explanation, just more cheap parlor tricks and puzzles, and his hands clasp around hers now, both of them; he interlaces their fingers and regards them and her interchangeably. She's shifted off his shoulder but he can look at her now, like he still and properly wants to. ] And I know I scared you. I know I did. I didn't mean to. I wouldn't mean to.

[ And yet here for a reason. ]

[It was a light. It tried to guide him. Too many vagaries, not enough specificity. It niggles at her, like the light touch of a feather along the goosebumps of her arm. She shivers, and brushes at her sleeves. Spiderwebs. Monsters in the dark.]

You scared me. But you didn't kill me.

Fear isn't as bad as death. It hides behind your eyes and leaps out at things that remind you of it, but it doesn't keep you tied up and paralyzed the way death does. It doesn't hurt. Not physically.

[A roundabout, convoluted way of saying she forgives him. Which might be a lie. Maybe she hates him - or maybe she'll hate him tomorrow. Right now, she loves him and wants to peel the layers off his skull until he shows her what he's thinking.]

Don't scare me anymore, though. This place - this is a different kind of place. We can't afford to scare each other. Just because you know what I did . . .

[She trails off. The weight of guilt comes down on her shoulders again. What I did, what he did, what we did. Does Will still condemn her? Still hate her? Still fear her for her lies? She doesn't want to know. But she does. But she can't.]

[If he lashes out, she'll lash back. She is a mirror of emotion. She cares too much to stand, and will be happy to burn herself out to a calloused shell if that's what it takes. Hannibal has convinced her, leading by awful example: she will be an empathetic monster, which is the sort that precludes weakness. Not like him, but not unlike him, either.]

[Or else she will be just a girl.]

[Or else something else entirely.]

Please tell me what happened, Will. Don't lie to me. I'm not - I can't know unless you tell me.

[Helpless and lost for information until he has mercy on her. She is practically begging. She wants to know what happened, needs to know, how the dominoes fell, what blood was spilled.]

[What was their design?]

He took everything from me.

[ It comes out quick, seething between his teeth before he can contain it - his hands grip, spontaneous and momentary at her own as if testing just how solid once more. A vivid reminder before him. The feast, the pudding, he took the roast beast. Bestowed it upon him again as though a benevolent god, another altar he doesn't pray at (but he lingers at it, mesmerized by the lit candles - )

He feels as though he is once again the unreliable narrator, the man with the fragmented story he's only just scotch-taped back together. There is a tight feeling in his throat that he thinks it best if he tries to avoid. Abigail is so beseeching, a desperate tone that beckons him as though lifted upon high - not by clouds, as one might expect, but it's spider legs that he feels instead. That feeling you get after you swat a bug on you, that crawling sensation, amplified. He needs to stop thinking about it but he can't stop thinking about it.

It's not that he's not playing his home field advantage right now, it's that the game has up and changed its rules entirely - he has to re-learn them among those who have been playing it for months, years. He doesn't quite know where to plant the first footstep.

He doesn't feel merciful anymore. He feels as though the mercy's been bled right out of him and replaced with something horrifyingly new. He breathes, regardless, and he starts over. ]

Today, I woke up in a cell that never belonged to me, [ a hesitance, ] yet it held me in its full embrace as it had already before. I didn't ask for it back. It just found me. I remember that mattress as though a very old, very lumpy friend. Abigail -

[ The same excuses that made him feel crazed carry all too much relevance here and now, various fishing lines lashed to Abigail Hobbs' greater extremities and he doesn't know which string he should start plucking at. Another cautionary tale is hardly something she needs, albeit something she wants very desperately. His fingers squeeze once more, gentler this time as his thumbs start to press methodically across her palms, mapping out the lines. A memorization exercise, a practice in recent sensory deprivation. ]

I feel as if you should know it all, I've told you - [ The her that was not-her, an echo at best of Abigail's tenacity that he spoke to during his wearier times, and the idea even has a half of a fond smile tugging tiredly up at the side of his mouth. ] You can ask me anything you want.

[ The open invitation lies, and he can nearly hear the river's water running about his kneecaps, sloshing invitingly with the current. Beside him stands Abigail, still bound in her fishing line. ]

[He is crazed. In a way this comforts her. It makes her feel righteous. Yes, yes; Will Graham is no greater than anyone else. No higher above the urge to violence than she is. He is no better.]

[No less likely to be caught in the web, in the jaws of a monster. She is not weak, or if she is, he's just as weak or maybe weaker. She is vindicated. She practically glows.]

[I've told you, he says, and this confuses her but doesn't distract her. She knows what she wants to know, it's been shadowing her mind since he first spoke on the network.]

Did you kill him?

[A question she speaks with a trill, with a thrill. Wouldn't it be nice if-- wouldn't it be right if-- And she isn't sure if she believes it's possible, but wouldn't that be a solid tying-up of that chapter of this story, if Will Graham put a knife to Hannibal Lecter's throat and slit it ear to ear. Wouldn't that be something.]

[And yet if he had, she would be jealous. Jealous that Will took the opportunity when she didn't. Jealous that he got that last, victorious moment. Jealous that she was not included in the good feeling of killing. Jealous that Will was the last thing Hannibal saw, not her. Jealous all in theoreticals, fractal patterns and offshoots of reality. But envy is strong in her.]

[She wants to be as important to Hannibal as Will is, and knows she never will be. It makes her bloodthirsty.]

[Tell me you killed him. She is so much realer here than in his mind, so much crueler, so much more than a memory. So much more flawed.]

[She squeezes his hands, arches toward him, breathless for answers. Breathless to be disappointed or elated. She wants to know every bloody detail.]

[ Like a child at prayer, so eager to hear a response that she probably won't hear or even like.

It sends an instantaneous surge through him is all, a flash of eye white before his thumbs bear down into the sockets - eyeballs pop like grapes, and red sluices upward and paints his palms something terrifyingly sweet. The problem is that he's killed Hannibal Lecter in so many strangely, violently intimate ways inside of himself already, none of them quite fitting. None of them quite good enough.

Any 'yes' that's anything less than instantaneous, frenetic, victorious tastes like a betrayal in his mouth; he won't lie to Abigail and he won't hand himself that victory ('victory' is, in that moment, such a strange word) until it's due, it doesn't matter how close he gets. The 'no' feels possibly more stale in his teeth, treasonous in a way that he hasn't acquired whatever kind of macabre avenging that he wants to promise her.

He hesitates and that's probably answer enough, his brows carefully knitting. ]

I tried. [ He admits that freely enough, wets his lips. ] Oh, I tried.

[ Did he? He thinks of a gun barrel pressed into a temple and a rudimentary inaction to follow with it. A bullet to the head, how very unimaginative in that comeuppance if he'd decided on actively pulling the trigger.

Culturally speaking, cannibalism is often synonymous with immortality. ]

I have found myself imagining more times the sharp, pained gasps for breath beneath my fingertips, [ as though a blood geyser systematically staining the floor of the Hobbs' kitchen, ] the pulse of a collapsing trachea and its final death spasms. Limbs jerking, as if trying to wake a mind that desperately needs its - [ distaste colors his tone: ] beauty sleep.

[ The wet pack of flesh beneath his fists is something intoxicating, Randall Tier's very visage still emblazoned within him, and his hands quake and grasp and readjust against her own, both a comfort and a controlling sort of grip. ]

[He hesitates, and she is almost physically ill with disappointment. But his clarification lets her see more clearly than she has in months.]

[Not so different after all. Neither of them can pull the trigger, not yet; neither of them can manage to do the deed. He is too important, to central, to both of them in different ways. He is the sun, and they orbit around him, cursing his heat but unable to push him to nova for fear they'll go dark themselves.]

[Or else maybe it's something simpler. Maybe they would just miss him.]

[She sways slightly in the sinuous wake of his words. There is a poetry to death in his speech - like Ben's stories, but less allegorical, more floral. If this was a sermon, she would be offering praise. This is a church she would join. This is the place she belongs.]

I tried, too.

[Quavering. She tried.]

I would have made him suffer. I would have made him lose control of himself. I had a way, I had a plan, but I . . .

[She lost her nerve. She didn't want to go out. She didn't want to miss him.]

I didn't.

[If only Will would fill the silence with bloody words again, maybe she wouldn't feel like such a failure.]

He would just have come back anyway, here. But it would have been--

[The best right perfect delicious honorable thing.]

Satisfying.

[ I bestow the art of a slow death, armed with mercilessness and a mere childlike precision. Where I have suffered, he too will suffer. Where I have bled, from ear to ear like a ghoulish and weeping smile; where I have been made a trophy, belittled to mere meat and dying cells; where I have stepped out of my own nightmares and into my father's fantasies; he will die knowing I have returned his "gift". With eyes meeting and hands touched, I will take back what is mine.

Nicholas Boyle has not whet my stranger appetites, nor has he wronged me so vehemently as this man and his pretty, twisting words.

There will be a space where he is gone, the paled portion of a wall where a favorite painting once hung. I would bleach myself of him, and revel in the scent of sickly, pungent satisfaction upon my hands.

This is my design.

He can see Abigail's shaking hands clutched around a weapon, uncertainly certain of what it is she must (but more so wants to) do, as vividly as if they were his own. It makes his fingers go a bit deadened, loose on her own hands when they tremble (empathetically, and unconsciously). He smooths them out over hers instead. ]

Killing Hannibal won't solve much of anything.

[ He, too, has missed more than one opportunity, when he wasn't blinded by emotion, overwrought and jumping to the extremes that would suit him best rather than fully hatched, detailed schematics. He's unable to think of Hannibal Lecter's death in a purely clinical light. He has, however, learned to hone his plans, so far as the long run is concerned.

Perhaps with bumps and bruises along the way. ]

Especially here. [ For reasons he still and cannot fully comprehend. ] Here where nothing is corporeal, solidified enough that you might touch and know. [ Nobody knows here, and they've all stopped asking the same questions. ]

That's abstract wisdom, in not having killed him.

[ He thinks of a cocky, crooked smile that he sent after the man. He thinks of guns; he thinks of bloodied, pulpish faces that are and aren't Hannibal's. He thinks of a stag, large, tall, muscled, intimidating, and he has to dream (maybe, sometimes, with embellished detail) of how Hannibal Lecter might look mounted atop its antlers.

'Satisfying' is a good word. ]

Hannibal Lecter uses his freedom, by his jurisdiction, wisely. Carefully crafted, as though a working clock face. Remove some of the parts and it won't tick, the clock won't be right again. Denying his life denies that freedom. [ And Will knows, instinctively rather than knowledgeably, that this man will value his own choices above all else. ] It's not without consequence.

[ He raises Abigail's hands in his own, their hands clasped as in shared prayer, and he presses his own knuckles (wrapped reverently around Abigail's hands) to his chin, tucking them underneath and resting his head atop of them both. His eyes read pride, his mouth speaks differently. ]

What stopped you?

Edited (ohhhhh my god mal shut the fuck up about will graham) 2014-06-30 19:24 (UTC)

[It's hard to understand. There is a part of her, a big part, that can see nothing better than Hannibal's death. Over and over and over again his death. She thinks that if she could bind someone to her tightly enough, she could make them kill him a hundred times until he lost his spirit entirely. Harvey could and would do it now.]

[But she wants the first kill, at least, for herself. Will could be competition for her now, for first blood.]

[She doesn't want to think about that. Instead she looks at the pride in his eyes and takes it in greedily, like a starving child. This is what she has wanted for so long. Pride, love, a father who will hold her tight and love her unconditionally and keep her safe--]

[But there is danger that way. He didn't keep her safe, did he? He just frightened her, and then she died.]

I don't know. [Whispered; hoarse.] I mean - I, someone was helping me, and she would only help if I really wanted it, and then I . . . didn't. She could tell I was lying.

I got angry. So I.

[She licks her lips. He will know, he will know eventually. He will find out. She has to tell him.]

I killed someone else.

[Someone who reminded me of you.]

[She does not say she's sorry.]

[ Mirrors, parallels, irony, they've always been something of a fascination to him, if not just funny in their own morbid sort of ways. Abigail tried to kill Hannibal. Abigail couldn't kill Hannibal. Abigail killed someone else instead.

At once, Will pictures Randall Tier beneath his own two hands, the satisfaction of bleeding knuckles and the distinctive snap of a zygomatic bone beneath his fist. There had so rarely been a sound so rewarding than the snap of bone, a burst of blood, and knowing - in the way that gods know they can crush humans between their teeth if they so please - that you were the cause of it.

His fingers abruptly leave her own, but not for the reason she'll likely suspect. They're just covered in blood, but so are hers. There's something that feels decidedly - off about that mingling. Though, at the same time, a comfort, a sort of shared intimacy between them.

'Who did you kill?' sits just underneath his tongue, ready to be born through grinding teeth. ]

How did you kill him?

[ It's what comes out instead, a curiosity he can't shake, a picture he needs - needs - to paint within his mind. ]

[He pulls away. In that moment she could reach out and choke him, she could kill him unceremoniously and leave his corpse on the floor. But she doesn't move - just stays where she is, with her hands outstretched, her fingers curved into something almost a fist.]

[He has no right to judge her. No ground to stand on. She will not be cast aside by him, not anymore. She's all wrath, all sharp edges, fire in her eyes.]

His name was Ryan Hardy. [Her tongue twists like a snake in her mouth, prodding at the inside of her cheek as she doesn't say He was just like you or Hannibal wanted him or Killing him felt good.]

I tricked someone into giving me a taser. And I . . . had a knife. I knocked him out, and I gutted him.

[She taps her sternum, then drags her finger down her belly. Like gutting any animal.]

[Her eyes are cold and hot all at the same time.]

[ It has the effect she was hoping for - it's wounding, to hear aloud, in a way. Do as I say and not as I do. For so long, Abigail was this pure enigma to him, incapable of wrongdoing, a mere victim of her father's actions. There was Nick Boyle. And then there were the girls, all those girls.

His name was Ryan Hardy, and she knocked him out and gutted him. Like a fish, like - a deer, a crippled stag.

Will can feel his own gaze darken, and for as much as she wants to cut him with her words and flash her pride before him, just so much as he had the same, it's all Will can do to just reach out and tuck some of that long hair behind her ear. His hand curves against her cheek, and he carefully lifts her chin a tick, so that he can properly see her better.

Maybe he means to cut her just as she has him. Or maybe he's just disappointed once again that she's no better than the rest of them.

His tone has an edge of sardonicism to it: ]

How far you've come in your recovery, Abigail.

[She is cut. She is wounded. She is bleeding openly, her anger evidence of how much he's hurt her. Rejected her utterly in one sentence, scorned all the work she's done before Ryan Hardy's death and since. He has reduced her to less than nothing.]

[Her eyes well with tears, but they don't fall. His fingers are warm on her face. She lets them sit for moments, just moments, and then pushes them violently away.]

How far have you come? [she spits, snarls, a brittle animal backed into a corner. He has no right. He has no right to judge her. And yet she's always feared he would.]

[They are neither of them any better than Hannibal in the end, she thinks, when left to the devices of their worst impulses. But she has done better. She has been better. She possesses better in her heart and soul.]

[She doesn't expect Will to believe this. He's always believed that she is what he wants her to be; she has occupied a mythical space in his mind, and now she's shattered her own perfect image.]

[Well, fine. She doesn't want to be a perfect monster anyway. She wants to be a human one.]

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