Chapter Text
Chapter 23: The Unquiet Grave
Abigail doesn't fall asleep the way Will would have preferred her to. At his insistence, she'd woken up and gotten her things ready. At the expression on his face and the brusque nature of his voice, she accepted that they were leaving with Hannibal Lecter. At his exasperated grunt and shrug, she allowed that the car Dr. Lecter pulled up in was in no way, shape, or form the car he always drove. At his borderline parental tone at her hesitance, she plopped down in the back while Will drove and the doctor allowed the car-that-may-or-may-not be his to be commandeered.
Naturally, at his light suggestion ten miles into the drive that she lay back down and get some more shut-eye, she sat ramrod straight with legs criss-crossed in the middle of the back seat. Each time he glanced into the rearview mirror, he found her staring back. He hadn't spoken during much of their time since leaving the Great Red Dragon to his meal. After her reassurance that the injuries from the wreck were superficial at best, she'd remained quiet with her back to him on the spongy and suspiciously damp bed. From there she'd fallen to an exhausted sleep. If she hurts, she makes no comment. Only watches.
Hannibal sits with far more ease. He's content in the passenger seat to watch electric poles swing by in rapid fashion, the snow whipping by and blinding with each random flash of car lights in the distance. Will wonders if he'd slipped back around to grab the linoleum knife in order to get his revenge when Will least expects it.
I'm fond of you. Can you see?
Will envies his ease. Since he'd driven away from what had almost become his final resting place, ants marched along his skin and left vengeful rashes. Red Dragon with walls as high as mountains, Dolarhyde's decimated in his need to be Seen.
Pressed between the cold and the vending machines, Will had felt something powerful in how he'd been able to finally, finally see through Hannibal so easily, and yet...
Now, in the cramped space of the car, Will finds that he desperately wants to run. Run and run and run until his legs give out. He wouldn't get far; Will's pretty quite sure he couldn't get much more than a mile before falling into a ditch and letting the cold take him like Purnell likely will.
Will had let her do that. He'd shut his eyes and let her walk into the frigid night to die alone. Wandering the halls of his own mind palace, opening doors and peeking behind curtains, he's not quite sure if he can find the guilt he should be feeling right now. His body aches something awful, and bruises from the seatbelt had already formed in a striped fashion across his chest and neck. Small cuts had dotted his shirt a suspicious pink where the belt broke skin. He hadn't noticed until taking a quick shower.
"So many questions you must have to remain so silent," Hannibal observes once they find their way to the interstate.
Plows had long already gone through to pave the way, semis keeping most of the falling snow at bay in the aftermath. Giants alongside their lone, nondescript car. He imagined each one as sentinel as they passed by.
"He's waiting for me to fall asleep-" Abigail says sweetly.
"Abigail-"
"I don't mind her hearing what I have to say," Hannibal assures him lightly, as though that's the only thing tying Will's lips into a knot. He looks away from the window, and Will avoids his stare.
"Why are you going on the run with us?" Abigail asks when Will still can't speak. "No one could have ever figured you out."
"You knew?" Will asks, stunned.
He glances in the rearview mirror, and it's her turn to avoid his stare. The air in the car reeks decidedly of onions and guilt, and he turns the ac on despite the cold outside in order to jog some awareness into his skin. There's something oddly exhausting about a near-death experience. He's not quite sure if he should let Hannibal take the wheel, though--that is, not quite sure if he can trust where they'd end up.
"He wanted...well, he wanted to know what I did to you after you left the hospital that day," she finally admits when Hannibal doesn't rise to her defense. He still sits as pleased as punch in the passenger seat, letting her squirm in the aftermath of the admission. "I didn't want to say anything, but he said he'd tell Agent Crawford."
"How'd you know?" Will directs this to Hannibal.
"How couldn't I know?" Hannibal objects.
"He has steel walls, so I didn't see him looking," Abigail explains quickly. Likely she's worried another emotional upset would lead Will to flipping the car into a ditch, and could he really be hurt by the thought? "He told me his secret after I told him mine."
"You kept her secret," Will murmurs.
Hannibal hummed an assent. "Your walls at that time...your Dreams of her couldn't help but spill out. I saw them when you looked into my eyes the first day we met, how the two of you had blended so seamlessly."
It's never occurred to him to think about what Hannibal had seen that first day, when Will still tossed and turned about the idea of whether or not he was truly alive or if he'd actually died the day he murdered Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Storming away from that support group, throat burning with a wet pain, how must his dreams have seemed to someone like Hannibal?
"I felt it prudent to keep her secret as well as yours," he tacks on when Will doesn't speak.
"I wasn't trying to tack on more secrets," Will snaps.
"You're the one who taught him to weaponize his gift," Abigail accuses.
Hannibal is surprised. "Did you tell her about that?"
"He did it right in front of me at the bar!"
"What did you do at the bar?"
Will grinds his teeth and turns the heat back on, skin sufficiently numb and mind wide awake. "It wasn't intentional."
"It was intentional," Abigail corrects.
He flushes, but he reasons it's the sudden change in temperature in the car, that's all. "A guy wouldn't stop hassling us, so I told him to fuck off."
"He took one look at the guy, saw right through him, and stole his anger right from under him," she says, like divulging a secret. Will senses her urge to get the focus off of her own secrets, a child tattling. "Twisted the fear of everyone in the bar while doing it, too, in his quest to make the guy piss himself."
He hadn't realized he'd done that. Will fiddles with the radio dial.
"How did it feel?" Hannibal asks.
"I'm not in the mood to be psychoanalyzed right now," he warns.
"In the short time we've been apart, you've been busy."
Will wonders how cold Purnell must be by now--or is she already dead? It's too late to go back and see.
Hannibal seems to sense the way his thoughts leap, how despite the way he'd so easily walked into his mind palace, he was in no way as calm as he'd originally seemed. They pass a semi and fishtail modestly climbing the small snow piles between lanes. He takes Will's hand, the doeskin pair stark against Will's black leather. He doesn't press for more secrets.
Despite her warnings to the contrary, Abigail does fall asleep somewhere between nine o'clock and the next gas stop. Will Feels the air around them and can't quite sense any sudden feelings of recognition, a jolt of fear before a dash of adrenaline. He wonders how long before Jack has the dogs after him. They'll find another car soon, but from there what was the plan? How long until there was no cash? How long until Hannibal gutted him in retaliation?
"Penny for your thoughts?" Hannibal asks after they're on the road again.
"When you stopped being curious, why didn't you stop killing, too?" he asks after he gets a few sips of coffee in. He hasn't slept yet, but he can't quite bring himself to. In a cramped space, Will isn't so sure he wants to succumb to the stark reality of the nightmares that are sure to come.
"When you stopped being curious, why didn't you say something?"
"I didn't know if I could trust you," Will replies shortly.
"Precisely."
"Says the cannibalizing serial killer," he hisses, a glance to Abigail's prone form. Her head is kinked at a bad angle; she isn't going to wake up happy.
"How was I to know that the moment you found your RE you wouldn't run to Agent Crawford and immediately point your finger?" Hannibal says evenly. "Programmed from such a young age to only answer to them, how could I have predicted you?"
"You knew something, Will Graham," Red Dragon says coyly. Knowingly.
"I've kept secrets from them for a long time, Hannibal," he says softly.
Hannibal takes his time to think on that; his expression is placid in thought, fatigue apparent only in the lines around his mouth. "I imagine there is a reason the Great Red Dragon couldn't bring himself to devour you," he agrees after a time. "In fact, that would explain why you so seamlessly took control of him."
"He would have killed you for that," Will feels the need to inform him. He's not sure why.
"You wouldn't have let him," Hannibal replies easily.
Will is sure that if Red Dragon had tried that same act a few months ago, Will would have easily and incidentally let him, but thinking of that makes him think of the rabbit that hadn't hopped fast enough and how the meat tasted like terror.
"What is your end game, Hannibal?" he asks. He thinks of how intimate Hannibal's thoughts had been in the memory, how he'd wanted to touch Will as much as Will had wanted to touch him at that moment. He thinks to reach across and grab his hand, but he refrains. Now's not the right time.
"What do you mean?"
"I was leaving, regardless...you could have stayed. Nothing would have tied you to any crime. Crawford would have never found you."
"You walked into my private thoughts and still have to ask?"
Will scowls. "Are you going to keep slaughtering people and forcing me to Dream of how much pleasure you gained from it? Are you going to make me go through that again?"
Hannibal takes his time. The songs shift as a new DJ comes on, and Will enjoys half of a corny ballad before he admits, "I hadn't entirely planned to do what I did to you, either, Will."
"...What the hell is that supposed to mean."
"Any other empath would have fallen to a coma." Hannibal's incisor flashes as he bares his teeth; whether a grimace or a smile, Will can't tell. "Did it ever occur to you that your power is so potent and inherent that even while you Dreamed, you made reality things I meant as only fantasy that you occasionally dreamed, not something you thought you lived?"
Will lets a whole song and commercial go before he feels calm enough to say anything.
"I don't think you mean to sound like it's my fault I feel like I murdered your victims," he says, and God damn if it doesn't come out even and level-sounding.
"Not at all," Hannibal agrees readily, "I'm awed by how your mind creates things. You are utterly unique, but in that is the capability of true terror should you decide to use your gift for harm. Minds aren't meant to exchange memories in their entirety like that."
Will shudders, and the urge to reach across and take his hand shifts to a sudden need to strangle him. "Fuck you."
He thinks of how he'd read over the studies done on Hannibal. He once thought Hannibal was unique, too.
"I want you to see a route through my dreams," Hannibal suggests, a blunt and obvious detour. "If you choose to follow it, I believe you'll find my end game and something more." A brief smile, tantalizing and just as dangerous as a devil's.
Ah, but Will had just made peace with the Great, Red Dragon. He isn't feeling too afraid of a devil.
"Your walls are up, even while you sleep," he points out.
"You found the crack once. You'll find it again." Hannibal doesn't seem too worried about it, and he shifts to lean his seat back and close his eyes to sleep. It's a peculiar thing, seeing him so out of schedule to be sleeping in rumpled clothing in the late morning, and Will wonders just how many memories of his Hannibal 'accidentally' planted within his walls. He wonders if he should believe the things he'd said, that an E-3 could do such a thing.
Then again, Mr. Jackson may have a word or to on the matter, if he could remember anything.
"Hannibal," Will prompts after a few minutes.
"Yes?"
"I let him go." A beat. "Dolarhyde, I mean. I didn't kill him."
Will can't see his face, but he can hear his smile. "Of course you did, Agent Graham. You help people."
-
When Will finally breaks, he presses bare fingers to Hannibal's left wrist, tucked under the glove he'd worn. Feeling for his walls now that he knows they are there is much easier, and among the feelings of REM, there is a sense of excitement and contentment.
He feels like a voyeur, Seeing while Hannibal sleeps. Still, the wall keeps him from whatever it is Hannibal is willing to share, as impenetrable as it ever was. Now that the offer is again presented, though, Will finds himself hungry to see. He wonders if it will be easy like before, as seamless as wanting to see Hannibal's secrets and then suddenly seeing them. There is something disconcerting about how easy it is to do it now that he knows how.
But Hannibal knew that, surely.
The crack in Hannibal's wall is Will, and he finds it with fingers trailing the crevices of the stonework, monkshood blooming where seeds land. Much like the case with Abigail, finding someone that wants to be found is far easier, and he puzzles over what it is Hannibal felt when he realized his curiosity had changed. Abject horror, and yet...puzzled acceptance. Curiouser and curiouser. He drags fingers over the feeling, something bemused and held with the same inspection as an estranged friend that suddenly shows up one day on your doorstep and expects a loan.
Hannibal is careful, even in his dreams. As a Dreamer, it seems that he is especially careful. The house Will plucks from Hannibal's head, waiting, is a modest Victorian style set just close enough to the woods for comfort. Will senses the ease of getaway, should it come to that. A driveway snakes the way only someone with money could make it, winding out in a black ribbon into the mouth of more trees. Surrounded, they may have a sense of safety out of the sight of prying eyes, and there's promise to how defensible they could make the stronghold--that is what Will Feels, studying the house Hannibal left for him in his Dream. A stronghold. A fortress. Some place to lay his secrets. Some place to lay his head. A home.
He takes the route as though he knows it, and maybe that is what Hannibal meant when he said he took his memories. Effortlessly, and all because Hannibal had simply allowed the opportunity.
Hannibal wasn't repulsed like others, though. The raw power of an E-3 excites him more than anything. Will can Feel that, too.
Abigail had woken up during the drive, but she wasn't much for conversation. He'd only tried asking about her wounds, but the response had been so violently sharp and curt he tabled that for another time. He isn't sure what all she witnessed that night from the crumpled safety of the car, and he isn't sure when he's going to find out. There's the very real the possibility she hates him for sparing Dolarhyde when he hadn't spared her father; he can't fix that if that's the case.
The tires eat miles of road. Will takes the exits and turns like he's done this a thousand times before.
-
The house is abandoned when they arrive sometime late in the evening. Abigail had been the one swap out the cars for them, disappearing down an alley and appearing ten minutes later with a corolla as average as every other model. He'd wanted to ask, but she wasn't in the way of giving information just yet.
Will stands in the driveway even after the other two enter the house, more to stretch his legs than anything. The air feels lonely, the place maybe once loved but now forgotten. He inhales and watches windows light up in staggered time wherever a tired Abigail roams next. Likely to find a real bed to lay out on and count her wounds.
He wanders the driveway, the forest beyond swallowing up the asphalt tongue that winds to a street far off the beaten path. The sign at the end warns that it's a Private drive. Only this house rests on it, and the look on Hannibal's face when they'd arrived had been equal parts warming and unsettling. He thinks of the rabbit who had hopped too slow and swallows back the taste of it.
"You found it," Hannibal says, grabbing his attention. He walks down from the wraparound porch and makes his way over, his suit wrinkled from the constant travel while crammed into the car. He'd offered to drive or even pay for a hotel on more than one occasion, but Will had adamantly refused, his foot unmoving from the petal. Something wouldn't quite let him relinquish control.
"I did," Will agrees. He looks back to the winding driveway. "It isn't so hard when you know what to look for."
"Other empaths out of the eye of the government go their entire lives struggling to control what you make reality just by saying it," Hannibal says thoughtfully. "The moment you allowed yourself to learn it, you did. As easy as breathing. Natural."
"Hardly," Will retorts. He rubs the back of his neck, mildly uncomfortable with the praise.
Hannibal's lip quirks into a smile. "What do you think?"
"Of the house or of how many laws I've broken?" Will wonders. At Hannibal's inscrutable expression, he amends, "I think I'm going to fall on the first bed I find in there and not get up for a few days." He makes no move to go.
"Do you think I've laid a trap for you inside?" Hannibal asks lightly. "Or do you find the moon particularly beautiful this time of night?"
"I found you your house, Hannibal. I think I already fell into the trap."
His brows lift. "Oh?"
"Haven't I?" Will glances over at him, then laughs, exhausted, and rubs his face. There wasn't enough coffee in the world that could have gotten him much farther past this place. It was a good thing he'd looked into Hannibal's walls when he had. "You got me out here all alone. That was the goal, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Hannibal agrees after a considerable pause.
"So what's the next step in your plan, then? What do you do to me next?"
He's staring at the moon when he asks, so he's surprised when he's grabbed by the lapels of his coat. Before he can think to protest, he finds lips pressed against his own, but much like before there is a sense of separation, of Will kissing Hannibal and Hannibal distinctly kissing Will. Two people with want in their bones.
Unlike the last time, though, there is nothing to stop Will from indulging more, tongue dipping in to taste something he's sure should be forbidden. Gloved hands glide along Hannibal's back, pulling him closer as he can't help how horridly selfish he's being, how his lips taste like a future if Will could only open his eyes to See it.
When Hannibal takes his hand to guide him into the house and deeper still to a master bedroom whose furniture lays protected by thick, heavy sheets, Will lets him. He traces fingers on lips that buzz with the need for more.
-
He sleeps for almost two days, and he Dreams walls that sprout Monkshood from the cracks, growing with wild abandon. The planters are overflowing with Thyme that makes the air ripe as he walks bare feet across it. In the field beyond, the Ravenstag watches.
-
"Are we staying here?"
Abigail finally speaks to him the next day. In that time, Will has touched bare hands to the walls of the house, felt them as a place once known fondly as a home. He wonders if Hannibal lived there a long time ago, or if it is the abandoned home from one of his victims; he's not sure if he wants to ask. He's not sure he wants to risk breaking the picture-perfect setting.
"Hannibal is showing me how to control my Dreams to create barriers." He's sitting by the creek in the back part of the yard. The stone bench is cold on his ass, and he was just about to go inside before she'd found him. "He thinks he can teach me how to use my gift to project a reality."
"Like he did when he showed you his victims?" she asks sweetly.
"Like he does with his own mind so easily that he passes as a neurotypical with a quirk," Will returns, just as quick.
"So you think you can protect it?" Us, she wants to say. So you think you can protect us?
"Do you trust me to protect it?"
Abigail frowns, and she avoids his stare. She doesn't want him to see. "I saw your thoughts jumping around. Each time you looked in the rearview mirror, I saw something Hannibal Dreamed into your mind. Something he...made you see."
She'd kept Hannibal's first secret. She'd kept her father's secret. Would she keep secrets further still? Or would she try to leave?
"I'm sorry you had to see that."
Ice sits loose on the creek, weak gurgles between glazed rocks. Will stares at that rather than look at her. Guilt is as double-edged as his empathy, and he'll be grilling Hannibal later on how to safeguard her from finding those things.
"I almost saw you die, Will."
She throws her arms around him and surprises him, holding on tight as she burrows her face in his shoulder. Will hesitates, but it's only her hair that tickles his nose, relief coupled with a traumatized ripple down her spine. He hugs her back, awkward, and he thinks of how Hannibal's lips had tasted in the moonlight. Tempting. Dangerous. Yearning.
"I'm sorry you had to see that, too."
"No barriers helped when they were trying to dig into your head like that," she says into his neck. "Do you think his help can protect you from that, too?"
Will's dreams had run rampant for how agonizing that'd felt, crippled and on his knees as someone tried to rip past his barriers to the squishy brain beneath. He swallows thickly and nods.
"Yes...he can help with that.
She nods slowly, jerkily. "If you think you can keep us safe, we can stay here. I...I think I could like it here."
"He says it's...it's like a switch. Now that I reach for it, my power shows me. It feels natural, like...like breathing."
Abigail pulls away to look at him for a moment, but she doesn't look too troubled by what she sees. She only scrutinizes, brows knit beneath a thick, woolen cap. There was a giant bruise where her cheek had hit the dashboard--something that hadn't revealed itself until later.
"Your walls are high," she says, and she looks around them with a sort of wonder. "You make them seem as though they're all around us. Walls in your head, but...everywhere, too."
"Hannibal calls it projecting. He's studied things like this."
She nods and looks to the frozen creek, chewing on her lip. "Just... promise me we don't have to help."
They're one in the same, aren't they? Both of them survived Garret Jacob Hobbs. What one does, surely the other shall. Would Will help Hannibal, should he decide to kill again?
"I'm an empath. I can't eat meat."
They both laugh a beat too late, which then makes them laugh sincerely; he Feels something in the air, something like promise.
-
Jack Crawford isn't the Director of the EBAU for no reason. Will knows him to be a shrewd man, as calculating as he is aggressive. He'd first scoped Will out in middle school, observing in the classrooms occasionally as they taught. Will knew early on that he was under a lot of high expectations. He knew they watched him closely.
It's not quite two weeks when he finds his way onto their property, and Will knows it because he Feels it in snow he stands in barefoot. His walls Feel as though they stretch out to the vast space beyond, and he Sees Jack clearly walking through the trees, slinking with a sneaking purpose. No weapon is drawn, but that doesn't mean much.
"Hannibal," he murmurs, and he blinks, coming back to himself. Pulling away from the walls, from his 'projections' as Hannibal calls them, is mildly dizzying, and he takes slow, calming breaths until the world stops spinning. His feet are on fire from the cold. "Keep Abigail inside?"
Hannibal stands beside him with fur-lined slippers and towels tucked in his arms. He clears his throat, and his expression shifts just slightly. Although a strong Dreamer, he can't do nearly anything so powerful as what Will is learning to do. He's a good teacher, though. Knowledge sits ready at his fingertips, and each session they work together leaves Will with something more in his arsenal to better protect them.
"Do you mean to go alone?" he asks.
"I do." And by that he means without any killing, if he can swing it. Alone means he has a chance to not have to take that step, if he's paid attention at all these last few weeks. The pain in his feet grows, sharp now that his body knows he's fully conscious and present. He climbs from the snow, and he towels his feet off, shoving them into the slippers. The faster he walks the pain off, the better. Needles pinprick across every inch, teeth made for tearing.
Hannibal offers his arm, and Will hobbles inside with him to warm up. He Feels the forest on his skin, warning him that danger was coming.
-
It's easy to find a man that wants to be found. That is what flits across Jack's mind as he stumbles across Will in a small clearing in the woods, a place Will liked to walk to in order to think by himself. He's had a lot of time to do that, between sessions with Hannibal. Thinking. Weighing. Assessing.
Will smiles grimly, and he holds a hand up in caution.
"Easy, Jack," he warns. "That's far enough."
"Will," Jack calls out, although his tone is hard to read. It's a mix of accusation and relief. Under it all, there's some part of Jack that cares for him still. A well-trained dog that made a mistake, only this mistake meant he'd have to put him down, wouldn't he?
"I'm not going back with you," he says pleasantly. "I'm hoping we can come to an agreement that leaves us both alive and happy, actually."
"You think that's a possibility?" Jack's incredulous, but only for a minute. He recovers well.
"I do."
"You have to come in, Will," Jack says wearily, and that initial relief is fast fading to something of flickering frustration. He'd carried a bite of resentment in the imprints of his boots in the snow. Will had made his life a bit difficult as of late. "You broke the law, and I know you've enough sense to know no one in there wants to hurt you."
"That's not quite true," he disagrees.
"Excuse me?"
"Kade Purnell tried to put a bullet in my head, and the only reason I lived is because Agent Dolarhyde got to her first." Will relishes the look of shock on his face. Something he'd tuck into his walls to bolster him later. A gut-punch, and it connects good. It spurs him to add, "I go in there, you going to put a bullet in my head, Jack?"
Jack gapes, and Will can See him so clearly, a neurotypical that was caught utterly unaware. Innocent, although ignorant. Kade Purnell may have used him, but his hands are clean where Will's life is concerned.
And yet...
"I just want your head on straight, Will," he says wearily, and he holds his hands out in supplication. He seems to sense that something has shifted, but he's not quite sure where yet. "You're not quite an RA, are you? Your head's on straight, I can see that. You'd passed your evaluation."
"Walk away from this place, and I won't hurt you, Jack," Will warns, and his voice darkens. "I don't want to hurt you."
The cold air sits sharp between them, biting in the silence. Their breaths ache for it. Jack's eyes narrow, and his stance shifts.
"What changed?" he asks. "Something changed when you followed that lead."
"You worried the killer got in my head?"
"I'm worried about somethin'."
Will thinks of the days following the murder of Garrett Jacob Hobbs; how Jack finally had to threaten him to go back, how maybe deep down Will had known that he shouldn't go back to work just yet. Only Jack had needed him, and he knew Will didn't want to disappoint.
"All the years you've known me and you still don't seem to realize that all I've ever wanted is to be left the hell alone," Will remarks. He looks away from Jack, to the clearing where he let his thoughts grow, where he let bare hands sink into cold snow to Feel the earth sleeping beneath.
He's coming down with a cold from all of the constant temperature fluctuations in the name of training, but it's worth it.
"I offered to leave you alone Will, and you didn't want to take it," Jack argues.
"Francis Dolarhyde urged the EBAU to allow me a 6-week break to get my head on right, and the request was denied," he returns. He doesn't look back to the man before him whose logical thought is slowly chipping away in the face of emotion. There isn't much reason to tell him these things. Maybe it's the vindication in seeing one strike after another tear at Jack's foundations with savage finesse. Will knew a lot about that. "Ironically enough, he then later lost his boundaries and gave to an alter Director Purnell knew about all along. The prescription issued to help him not anti-psychotics but sugar pills."
Jack stares.
"So, like I said before, if it's all the same to you I'd like to be left alone."
"If that's how you want to go out, then," he says. The cold enters his voice.
Will thinks his walls high, and he looks at Jack, into his eyes where secrets lie. He Sees him, each aspect of his character as his thoughts race but settle ultimately on justice, on law above all else. His hands reach for his gun. Will thinks them useless, and as he Dreams that reality into Jack's mind, Jack believes it to be so and drops his arms.
"This place haunts you because you will never find it," Will says, and his voice feels oddly loud in the brittle wood. Jack's silence in response makes his words sound all the more foolish, and yet within the Dreams unfolding in Jack's mind, they are real and they replace memories where he knew this place, where he'd found it and in doing so found Will.
"Should someone stumble some way towards it, you will deter them because it is not real, this place," he murmurs, and toe-to-toe with Jack he leans in to whisper in his ear. "Should this place become real again, you would defend it with your life, wouldn't you? Shouldn't you?"
Jack Dreams of his wife, how he'd do anything to protect her. He's nodding, and it's effortless because within his Dreams this would also protect her, wouldn't it? Protecting this place he did not know but would happily die for?
"Go. Take a long vacation alone and forget wherever it was you thought you found Will Graham." A pause. "Abigail Hobbs is dead, although you can't say why. How did she die? You'll never find out. They'll never believe you, and it will haunt you that you can't find her body."
The Dreams Will weaves become memory, and it's not so cruel as the Great Red Dragon when it's protecting him from a padded cage, is it? Jack Crawford nods against his cheek, memories already fading of the bread trail Jack took to find him, of how he'd ever come across that sleepy town that'd recognized the girl in the picture, and by-the-by just where had that Hobbs girl gone off to? Hadn't she disappeared? Why had he found evidence saying she'd been killed, then?
He has to find her...he has to regroup at the EBAU and start a manhunt for her. Somewhere south was the lead, wasn't it...? Somewhere south, and Zeller was going to get right on it once Jack was back at the EBAU...
Jack Crawford turns away from Will without truly seeing him, and he stumbles into the forest once more, hurrying towards the nearest town to fly home and begin the manhunt for Abigail. Abigail Hobbs was dead, and he'd die trying to find her.
It's not so cruel as what Red Dragon did to Kade Purnell, but Will still feels a stab of something like guilt when he does it to Jack. He stays in the clearing for a time after, letting ripples of the cold rip through him as though it absolves him of something.
-
He reaches the house and finds Hannibal and Abigail in a cozy den, more welcoming now that the sheets had been removed from them. He's allowed his space, and he bypasses them to what seems to have been a man-cave in its prime. He sits on the edge of the leather chair and thinks of the one just like it in Garrett Jacob Hobbs home.
He supposes guilt is natural when you allow yourself to feel it. Of course it was necessary for him to deter Jack, but did he have to set him on a manhunt like that? One he'd never achieve? Red Dragon would have found it funny, probably. Hannibal would praise that it was a sign of his power.
It can be good and bad , Hannibal had acknowledged after one evening of practicing projection. Fighting against Hannibal's walls to breach them and work his way inside. With Hannibal resisting, it was actually...almost fun.
A secret he locks well behind his walls, thank you.
He could have just let him go on vacation and return with no memory. Will nods and chews on him thumb, thinking about that. He could have, but he didn't. Maybe there's as much resentment in Will as there was in Jack. The things he's had to do, the things he's had to fight through...
Just as there are alcoholics and then there are weekend-indulgers, there is equal capacity to allow the power it gives you to take over reason.
He'd told Jack he wasn't handling it well. He wasn't handling things at all, and what had it been? Jack needed him. Jack had always needed him. Will had always wanted to help, and Jack needed that.
Will Dreamt that Jack didn't need him anymore.
But to Dream yourself a palace? A place to live your life in peace? Tell me the harm in that.
He stands up, and the thought of dinner--vegetarian, Will insisted--sounds amazing. This place had once been a friend's, but they died of natural causes and had left it to him. No one knows of it, he promises. They'd been paranoid enough for that.
The grave at the back of the woods bears a name in Japanese. The grave is quiet and doesn't reveal dark secrets. Will often wonders, alone in the forest, if she was an empath, too.
This place could be your home, if you let it.
He reaches the den at the same time Hannibal is sliding a book back into its place on the shelf. His breath catches, and the thought comes again.
"Hungry?" Abigail asks, standing up. The bruising on her jaw is only now better on the edges.
"Starving," he says, watching Hannibal.
All you have to do is Dream it, then make it your reality.