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01 | 🕐 | audio

[ 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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[It's a difficult thing to say aloud. The Piemaker's fist digs gently but tightly into Digby's fur for support, his face taking on a neutral expression so as not to go opening little trauma boxes once again. He'd thought he'd packed away that episode of his life relatively tightly. Opening it up for a stranger, even to help, was painful.

But Will's response surprises him. His expression breaks into mild confusion, as he turns to stare back. Will doesn't appear repulsed, only grim and quiet. He's thrown for a bit of a loop.]

It also comes with some degree of trauma.

I don't usually want people to know what I can do. Piemaking's as good an undercover job as any. You get to reuse fruit.

And there's that.

[ He doesn't mean to come across blase about the whole experience. It's frightfully traumatic, sure, what Ned has been through, and Will can feel that visceral sort of itch that comes with all things related to Hannibal. A distinctive feeling that twists itself nastily in his gut and settles there to fester and lie in wait until the opportune moment.

Reciprocating with more stories of the man would be easy right about now. But Ned's already been exposed to the full brunt of what Hannibal's capable of, and reliving his own past traumas would be, in his opinion, redundant. ]

It's not something I'd particularly want to advertise either. Nary a person who might approach with some sort of request or another. [ He glances over to Ned again, brushing a knuckle against his nose. ] Pie comes much easier in its handling than, say, humans do.

Generally speaking.

[The Piemaker does not for an instant suspect that Will and Hannibal are acquainted. It would be a terrific leap of logic and while he's done some detective work in the past, it's mainly been of the touching-murder-victims-back-to-life sort.

And likely it wouldn't help his psyche to hear more horror stories. He only mentions his own now in order to prepare Will for something which Will needs no preparation. The Piemaker tries to warn the new arrivals as best he's able]

Pie does handle better than people.

It's more than that. It's.

I'm the only...person in the world who can do these things. That I'm aware.

I'm the only person here on the Barge, too. Even where there's magic run amok, people still want you bringing back dead things. All the time.

[ A feat that's well-appreciated, even if, as aforementioned, with a degree of repetition for Will. Unfortunately, he's not really the show and tell sort of type. Maybe, with enough conversational pull, he would let up some of his more memorable experiences with Hannibal, certainly - there's few subjects he talks about more - but as for right now, he's keeping it on a surface level.

Ned, on the other hand, is a partially open book, with pages free to read - there may be some mark-outs and pages torn free to save his own privacy, but Will hasn't recognized too many of them as of yet. There's something endearing, about the open and honest. It's a nice change from his day job.

He can't even imagine the difficulty of having to deal with something like Ned has. It's not just the experience with Hannibal, it's the entire lot of it. ]

People want what they want. [ He admits, his lips pursing slightly. He can't say that he wouldn't have asked the same questions of Ned, had he been in a position for it to matter. But Abigail was here. The point was incredibly moot. ] And letting go is not something that has yet been innately birthed within the human condition.

[ For a moment, he has to say, he thinks of Beverly and his stomach does that twist again, bitter and angry and all the same thoughtful. It wouldn't matter. She wouldn't come back the same. Nobody's the same person after so much trauma, as he's sure Ned isn't the same person. ]

Entertain for a moment [ as he's sure Ned has done multiple times in his life, being given the power that he has ] being a completely average, baseline human. Would you trade it in? Would you change anything?

[He hadn't meant to turn the discussion towards himself: Will was new, and needed to know certain things about the Barge and his fellow passengers. He didn't need to know the Piemaker's childhood trauma or pent-up fears. The trouble was that it was all so readable on his expressive face. His wide eyebrows draw up tight together in anticipation of more questions.

It's not that he minds answering questions. It's more the fact that he knows he should be using this time to get Will more acclimated to his surroundings.

Though, Will seems to be managing better than most. It's hard for the Piemaker to pin down why Will seems to be an inmate]

No. We, um. We cling.

[He knew the feeling well]

...It's a layered question. And one that's probably impossible to answer the same time twice in a row.

Being able to do what I do has brought every tragedy and every good person into my life. Without it, I would be a completely different person. I can't say whether or not I'd like the kind of person I'd be or even if I'd be.

Too many things would have to change to make it all fit.

[ It's an old avoidance tactic that Will takes and embraces fully, combating difficult situations and potentially intimate lines of conversation with diversionary questions, with subject changes and what he likes to think of as subterfuge. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Here and now, while it's working, he'll take it and run with it. He'd never been one to talk about his feelings so much, and particularly not with this barge where everything seems so very overwhelming and new. He's talking to someone who can quite literally reanimate the dead. He finds that far more interesting than any discussion about his new arrival could possibly bring.

He doesn't like flaunting his arrival. And his regular questioning of the whys and hows are not only generally met with a dead end, but he finds that he's even boring even himself with his own skepticism. ]

If traumas change and mold a person, I suppose [ and it feels ridiculous to even say aloud, it sounds about as much so in his mouth ] supernatural powers would lend an entirely different spin to the matter. [ It's a difficult question he's asked, and he knows it.

So he relieves Ned of it for the time being, nodding towards him and raising his eyebrows. ]

But you do have pies going for you.

[ It could sound mocking when it slips between his teeth, but it's honestly meant to be encouraging, a silver lining to what else Ned has had to deal with.

Though, about that pie... ]

I do have pie.

[He confirms, not taking offense. It's not easy to offend the Piemaker...conventionally, at least. If Will had wanted cake instead of pie, the Piemaker could have very easily become offended.

But here he picks up the wooden box housing the pie, setting it on his lap and opening it. There are paper plates and forks inside; products of his own kitchen in his cabin.]

Pie seems to make the recent arrival better. In, um. Limited experience.

[Will might not seem like the typical inmate, but the Piemaker's first pairing was with Thomas, who was equally quiet and thoughtful and not immediately someone one would seek out for inclusion on a space prison. Will, in his own way, reminds the Piemaker of him.

He begins to cut the pie]

It's not all terrible people here. Most of us are decent, I think.

It's just the two or three bad apples.

It's more of a comfort than a - brightly colored pamphlet dryly detailing the whats and ifs of the journey on which I'm supposedly about to partake. I'll give you that much.

[ He watches Ned's hands rather than his face, equally more of a comfort than keeping regular eye contact with him. Ned seems sincere, and therefore it's nothing personal. ]

Only two or three? [ There's a half a laugh somewhere among that doubt. ] Most might be decent. [ Maybe. He'll go out on a limb here. ] Of course, plenty are also criminals.

Pie's more personal. And you can't eat a brightly colored pamphlet.

[The Piemaker doesn't mind the lack of eye contact - prolonged exposure to people tends to make him a little uneasy. He concentrates on cutting three slices: one for Will, one for himself, and one for Digby. He gives Will his piece first, then sets Digby's plate on the floor for the golden retriever]

Being a criminal doesn't mean a lack of decency. Or. Vice versa.

I tend to think of 'decency' here in the context of 'not hurting anyone.'

You could try. It wouldn't taste very good.

[ He accepts the pie without hesitance, though it takes him a moment to actually dig in as he watches Ned set a slice on the floor for Digby. That wrings a half a smile out of him, something reminiscent of home. Half of his dinner always ends up going to his dogs, scraps of meat and whatnot. Slices of pie, maybe not, but it's along the same vein. ]

Depending on if that's in the past or present tense, that may be a smaller category than you've reckoned. Then again, from what I've been told, the Admiral does, ah - frown upon the maiming and killing of the other passengers.

[ He slices off a bite of the pie, and raises it almost in a toast. ]

Go figure.

[He smiles a little at that, taking the small joke as a sign that Will's starting to grow accustomed to the Barge. He always found it a hard adjustment, and he was the one who chose to be here.

Beside him, Digby dug into the pie with predictable abandon, used to the scraps offered.]

I can't say for sure whether he frowns on anything. I've never seen his face.

But the wardens don't like it. Me included. I don't like...maiming or killing.

Is it getting any easier?

It doesn't seem like anyone has. Seen him.

[ It's a source of frustration to him, in some sense, that there are these wardens here, people who have voluntarily chosen to be part in this little hellish experiment. He's not sure what sort of trade it is that Ned's made in this venture, nor will he ask, but he's not sure what's worth enough to someone to submit to - whatever this is going to add up to being.

The maiming and killing - he doesn't comment on.

He chews thoughtfully at the pie, looking down at his plate as he tries to think of the right answer to Ned's question. Yes, 'right', because 'honest' will end up with him dragging up the same pessimism he's been holding at bay since he's arrived. Pie's easier. ]

It is only my first day.

[ First few hours, really. It means 'no', in a sense, without him strictly saying it. ]

Does it really ever get easier? Becoming accustomed to the situation, in my opinion, isn't exactly the same as 'easy'.

[The Piemaker would answer that it is worth it, once all emotions were out of the way. His benefits came in two-fold: he got his deal, and he got to help others escape their prison. He'd helped to free two inmates of his own, but whether that made him a part of the system or someone doing his best to work within the confines of what they were given, he couldn't say for sure. It was a question that kept him up at night.

But he wouldn't take back his deal for anything. His hand reached down to pet Digby once more.]

Sorry. It was a, um. A dumb question.

It..I wouldn't say easier. The burden's the same.

It just gets shared over a greater amount of shoulders, over time.

[ His eyes roam the skies once more, sketching across the stars. ]

I think I may be ill-equipped.

[ Not for the situation, he thinks. It's the last of what Ned says that really strikes him as problematic. He couldn't, back home. It was an impossibility to share the entirety of his tribulations with people who either wouldn't understand or who would blow the entire operation that had been so carefully created. ]

I've spent so long with my burdens set upon my own two that the entire [ how does he word this ] "sharing" process is one of near unfamiliarity to me.

[ Pie is easier to pay attention to. He slices off some more for himself, chews thoughtfully and purses his lips just the same. ]

I'd say I wear that intricately woven horse hair sweater with pride, but "pride" doesn't seem like the right word for it.

[The Piemaker once believed the same of himself. He believed that there could be no friendship, no one to rely on for as long as he lived. He worried constantly about what would happen should he become attached to someone only to find that they had passed away, that he had the power to change it, and the consequences that would arise from his choices.

Here on the Barge, he'd found solutions to his problems. He'd also found friends.

Not wishing to predispose Will of false hope that the situation would be the same for him, the Piemaker gave a nod, bowing to Will's much more superior, complete knowledge of himself and his own quirks]

It's not pride. It's. A kinder emotion than that.

Resolution, maybe.

I'd like to say things here will be different but I honestly can't tell the future. And I don't know you. Not well. Barely at all.

But I'd like to hope for kinder things. It's not all floods and breaches and bringing dead body parts back to life.

"Resignation" might be closer.

[ Because he has no resolution to his problems, not yet. He wears a broken crown of antlers upon his head, blood between his teeth, and so long as he's taking some mild revelry in that fact, this really just makes him a dirt-poor liar at the end of the day.

Maybe things will be different here. Maybe they won't, so long as he's around, so long as he's within grasp and his fingers can probe into Will's mind with much guile. He drops the fork onto his plate, rubbing furtively at his lips with a thumb and considering. ]

You don't know me. [ That much is true. ] But at least you have the potential for this optimism here.

[ Something he doesn't quite understand. The things Hannibal has made him do alone, it should be enough to quash that. Then again, it's still a battle that Will's fighting, a war he's not yet won. ] I don't like counting my chickens before they're all hatched. But nothing can be all bad. [ He pauses a beat, eyebrows raising as he eyes his plate. ] Not even Hannibal.

[ But that's a story he won't want to continue to dredge up. ]

At least the pie's good.

[Resignation sounds a good deal more final. The Piemaker struggled with finality: especially here, where endings were circular. Will might think he was at the end of something, but hopefully, in time, the Barge might come to show that he'd ended up at the beginning instead.]

It's hard-won. I didn't used to be optimistic.

[Not until very recently, in fact. And there were still setbacks, still struggles. But he'd made it this far.

He smiles a little at the compliment, setting his fork into the pie. The piece is halfway to his mouth when it stops in midair]

I..never mentioned his name was Hannibal.

[ Will doesn't smile at the irony of his having met this man, yet another one of Hannibal Lecter's - victims, as it were (he still has yet to reconcile the idea of his being one of them). In fact, his face very carefully doesn't change at all; he watches his plate and picks off another piece of pie.

Something about Hannibal certainly draws the hunger out of him. Pie isn't exactly meaty but it's still the nature of the conversation, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. ]

You didn't have to.

[ He says plainly, but explains a lot with four short words. ]

[The Piemaker's mind races furiously. Will knew - knows - Hannibal. But Will is a brand-new inmate. Either someone immediately told him about Hannibal upon his arrival - unlikely, given Will didn't even know the specifics about floods - or the far more likely scenario.]

You're from his world.

[Which, he decides, is a far worse thing than being stuck on a ship with the man. He realizes soon after uttering the words that he's only just blatantly mumbled the obvious, and turns back to stare at the half-eaten pie in his hands]

I feel the sudden urge to immediate switch the subject to more pleasant things.

Unless there's something you feel you want to share.

[ And Will does laugh at that; it's bitter but it's a genuine laugh. Sharing about Hannibal, right. There was a time - it's still a time, if he's honest with himself - where he couldn't talk about anything else. He couldn't think of anything else.

It's not that he feels particularly up to the challenge, letting loose about the man, the monster, and the spaces in between those two riotous ends of a very gray spectrum. He doesn't feel obligated either, but when the subject's there, it's all that permeates his thoughts.

Maybe that's not fair to Ned, trying to hold the conversation in this particularly dark corner it's been banished to. Then again, he was the one who brought it up. ]

I don't think I would even know where to begin.

[In a small way, the Piemaker understands. At least in part. He's never been the focus of Hannibal's attention in the way Will has, and is extremely grateful about that. But he, too, finds it difficult to stop talking about him once he gets going. For all his evil, Hannibal is intricate and multi-layered. Unraveling him only led to unraveling himself.

But it is very dark, and he wonders if he's helping or hurting Will's chances of graduation by carrying on this rather dangerous subject line]

I can start. I have a question.

Did he - does he - ...

Does he ever wear anything but suits?

It's...bizarre to think this after everything he's done, but I always feel shockingly underdressed. Like there's a function about to happen and no one told me.

[ Just - keep the laughs coming, Ned. Will's face wrinkles a bit, amusement and a touch of confusion. That's the first question he conjures, out of all of them? ]

I don't think he's ever really had an occasion where he hasn't been on full ceremony. He does like to impress.

[Despite the honest earnestness of the question, the Piemaker can't help but smile a little in response to Will's own expression. He stares down at his hands with a tiny smile. All right: maybe it was an odd first question, but he's always wanted to know]

So he's flaunting.

A one-man parade.

I thought that much was obvious. He can afford to be, can't he? Stately, without delving into the meretricious.

[ Will lets his plate set on his knee, reaching down to paw at Digby a bit again - he holds out a hand to let sniff, lick, whichever, and smooths his hand over the dog's head. It's a comfort, but moreover he really does remind him of Winston. ]

The, ah - The intimacy with which I know Doctor Lecter is probably bar none on this ship more prevalent, available, save for maybe his warden.

[ He's not sure how well Mal knows him. But he's fairly certain she's smart enough to have wrapped her mind around Hannibal's own. ]

It means you don't just have to ask me about suits, Ned, not if you want.

[Digby, in turn, sits very calmly beside Will. He's god the old-dog gaze but none of the physical traits, as healthy as the day he died. At Will's invitation, he sets his head on Will's thigh so as to be close to the pie plate, and uses his long tongue to lick up crumbs.]

[The Piemaker frowns at the question, at a sort of crossroads. Does he really want to have more access into Hannibal's mind? He's not his warden. He barely gets along with Mal, not since Dean left and came back. Hannibal himself certainly wouldn't care much one way or the other, right?]

I don't know how helpful that would be.

To you, I mean. Not to me.

What if asking about him sets back your own graduation?

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