mirrortouch | 01 | 🕐

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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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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?

[ He needs to stop doing that thing, where he gets the urge to laugh at everything ironic - people here just don't know any better. He's not the guy who didn't kill all those people here, he's just an enigma all over again. Why he's an inmate, no one knows. How he died, no one knows. They know there's something off about him, certainly, but there's always been something off about him and it's nearly back to the old days.

Though he does have the advantage now. Hannibal. He knows better for himself. Hannibal. He's more prepared for what it is that he can have slewed in his own direction.

That doesn't mean it's any less of a fencing match, some kind of fight to the end. Perhaps. Maybe it's just a stalemate, here. ]

Ned, to be brutally - incredibly honest - [ which he's not often ] I'm not sure my graduation could exist if I weren't allowed to discuss Hannibal Lecter.

He and I are - so deeply entrenched, twisted. He's the bear trap beneath the leaves. I stepped into it.

[The concept Will describes isn't lost on the Piemaker. He can sense that webbing without even being fully ensnared in it. He's never met a person like Hannibal, who can take someone's experiences and twist them into his own purposes so easily.

Maybe it will be cathartic for Will to be allowed to talk about it. He has no idea, and no file to go off of. Only instinct]

Do you want to discuss him?

It doesn't have to be now. This is just your first day and first days on the Barge are always rough enough without making them worse.

[ Cathartic, certainly, in a way. It's a lot easier to discuss Hannibal, as though at long length instead of at arm's. (Rather than being in his proximity, with his hands tightly around the man's throat - give to me what you took from me.)

Will rubs a thumb lightly at his bottom lip, along the line of it. He doesn't answer at first. ]

Honestly, Ned - There's already not a day in my recent life that has gone by where he hasn't at least been a passing thought. We're - [ Oh, he doesn't know anymore, and his tone is perfectly acidic: ] close.

I'm already in space. How much stranger can my day get?

[The Piemaker gives a rough, uneasy smile at 'close'. Close can mean a lot of different, equally terrible things. He's not sure about his place in all this, and whether he even has a right to interfere in the relationships Hannibal cultivates. Something to ask his warden, he supposes]

Assuming we're due for a flood...very, very strange.

I'm not a therapist or ever actually...been to therapy. No, sorry. I did go once. To someone who specializes in dogs.

But I'm a good listener.

The last thing I need is another therapist, Ned.

[ He rubs a hand at his forehead, parting it out to the side as he explains, in vague terms: ]

Hannibal was my therapist. [ Imagine that, now. Having Hannibal Lecter as your therapist. ] He was my friend, until I knew better. Should have known better.

[The look of dawning horror on the Piemaker's face gives a genuine picture of how he imagines that affair going down. Hannibal is bad enough as a Barge passenger: the idea of him sticking around inside one's head is terrifying]

You shouldn't.

Shouldn't have known better.

It's very...difficult to know something he doesn't want you to know.

We were friends, too.

I could see the signs with such a - a warped clarity, I had the details.

[ He's frustrated with himself, certainly, more often than not, but he sounds unapologetic for himself. ]

Hannibal Lecter certainly - sets the top spinning [ a metaphor he'd made for himself not long ago, wind him up and watch him go.

He gives a minute shake of his head, peering over towards the vicinity of Ned's hands rather than his actual eyes. ]

It always starts out as a - friendship. At first, if you're one of the lucky ones.

[The Piemaker's hands turn over each other in a motion one might use to roll dough: it's what he does, sometimes, to calm himself]

He's probably been doing his thing a lot longer than you or I do our thing.

Whatever our thing happens to be.

But he can't do it now. Not here.

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