Chapter Text
At Rudy’s, Brian and Jimmy have her Don Julio on the rocks already waiting on the bar. Beverly is as thankful to see it as she is to see them. Heedless of the peanut shells, she throws her shoulder bag to the floor, hikes herself onto the bar stool, and takes a glug: a tequila faux pas, but after the day she’s had she isn’t exactly in a sipping mood.
Brian and Jimmy looked a little hopeful a second ago, but now they’re clocking the rate at which Beverly is swallowing tequila, and both their expressions noticeably wilt.
“So?” Brian asks.
“Let the Katz out of the bag,” urges Jimmy.
She puts down her half-emptied drink, flicks her hair out of her face, and says, “Temporary reassignment.”
Jimmy outright gasps. “Whaaat?”
“You’re kidding.” Brian’s mouth is hanging open. He looks to Jimmy for help. “She’s kidding, right?”
Jimmy shakes his head, stunned.
Beverly keeps her eyes on the backlit row of liquor bottles behind the bar. People have shown her enough sympathy this week to last her a couple of decades. Of course she wants Brian and Jimmy to feel sorry for her—that’s what friends are for—but she doesn’t want to actually see it on their faces.
“They’re taking me out of the field,” she says. “Lab duty until further notice.”
She makes a face into her tequila, then shrugs. It isn’t a shrug of unconcern, but a shrug born of having so many concerns all at once that the only thing she can do is shrug, shrug ‘em off, just keep on shrugging.
Brian and Jimmy’s faces twist into identical squints of disbelief.
“Jesus Herbert Christ.” Jimmy flags the bartender. “I need another Jack and ginger over here. And can you make this one a double?”
Meanwhile Brian is sputtering. “Lab duty. La-ab duty? How does that even make sense? You’re under suspicion of evidence tampering, so they restrict you to the lab?”
“The irony of the situation isn’t lost on me. Thanks, Bri.” Beverly takes a few insistent sips of tequila. “And hello? I am not under suspicion of tampering with anything. Nobody thinks I actually contaminated a crime scene—at least, they better not. They told me it was ‘preemptive maneuvering.’ The FBI’s way of mitigating questions in the press about what I did, and why I’m still being allowed to do it without any internal review.”
“You aren’t telling us there’s gonna be an internal review?” Jimmy asks, eyes popping.
She shrugs again.
“There won’t be any review,” Brian says. “It’s all optics, man. Fucking optics. They’re pulling Beverly out of the field because out of sight equals out of mind.”
Jimmy nods. “The Bureau want to look like they’re doing something when they aren’t doing anything.“
“Not a bad thing, I guess,” Brian grumbles. “I mean, aren’t we rooting for the FBI to do nothing in this case?”
“No,” Jimmy says, firmly. “The FBI should be sticking up for Beverly. They should be holding a press conference assuring people she didn’t do anything wrong. For Pete’s sake, they gave her a commendation last May! Everybody in the Bureau knows our Beverly’s a hero, a stand-up gal, truly the best of us.”
“We are not worthy.” Brian mock-genuflects.
Beverly toasts them both with the last sip of her tequila.
“Bev,” Jimmy asks, a note of real anxiety in his voice, “are you sure this reassignment is only temporary?”
She puts up her best poker face as she considers the question. It’s honestly a toughie.
From the minute she first heard about her reassignment, Beverly has been questioning it. After all, the circumstances weren’t exactly auspicious. She arrived at Jack’s office expecting a private conversation, just her and Jack, but what she found instead was a Brooks Brothers convention. A swarm of Justice Department higher-ups occupied the room, none of whom Beverly had ever seen before. Chief among them: Kade Prurnell of the Office of the Inspector General, who sat in Jack’s chair and pronounced the word ‘misconduct’ with such bureaucratic fervency as to make Beverly feel like a dirty-palmed kid in the principal’s office. It all leaves her with the sneaking suspicion that her reassignment is only ‘temporary’ in the sense that it’s a baby step towards dismissal.
But she doesn’t want to say any of this to Jimmy. He cries when he’s upset.
“Jack says it’s only temporary. Promised me he’d do everything he can to see me fully reinstated ASAP.”
Bad call; looks like Jimmy might cry anyway. He’s blinking a lot. Meanwhile Brian doesn’t cry when he’s upset—he just becomes an even bigger dickhead.
“But Jack’s in even deeper shit than you are!” And then, at seeing her reaction, “Come on, you know it’s true. If Lecter’s lawyer goes to town on Jack the same way he went to town on you, come Monday the FBI’ll have a gold watch and a “happy early retirement” card waiting for him on his desk.”
Jimmy chokes on his drink. “They won’t get rid of Jack! Jack captured Hannibal Lecter.”
“Beverly and Will captured Hannibal Lecter,” says Brian. “Jack… officiated.”
Beverly thinks of Jack, banished to the flimsy metal chair in the corner of his own office, mouth a heavy down-curve. He didn’t say a thing during the Prurnell meeting other than, “Take a seat, Beverly.” All through the meeting she’d felt stirrings of bitterness over this—shouldn’t Jack be defending her, defending the integrity of her work?—but after the suits had cleared out, Jack took her aside and put one of his big cold hands on her shoulder. Looking at him, Beverly understood that the reason Jack had held his tongue during the meeting was because he didn’t trust himself to speak.
“He won’t get away with this, Bev.” Jack didn’t have to clarify who ‘he’ was. “I promise you, I’m going to fix this. Whatever it takes.”
Angry Jack was always a terror to behold. But Trying-Not-To-Sound-Distraught Jack was a whole other magnitude of frightening. Beverly could barely look him in the eye.
She can’t hear this stuff about Jack. Not now. Not when she’s more-than-half convinced Brian is right.
“Hey,” she says. “Lay off Jack, ok? You know that when it came to actually building the Lecter case, he contributed more than anyone. And it isn’t even debatable how much he’s done over the course of his career for ViCAP and the BAU, for the whole field of behavioral science. The Bureau needs him. And you need him, too, Brian.”
She digs him with her elbow and he has the decency to look a little humbled.
“Anyway,” she continues, “they aren’t gonna fire Jack just because Hannibal Lecter points a finger at him. I mean, Jesus! Hannibal Lecter! Why is anybody even listening to that guy?”
The anger Beverly won’t let herself express at Jack or at the Bureau now leaps out of her at this eminently deserving alternative target.
“It just kills me that Lecter’s allowed to do this after everything. It kills me. He’s exposed, he’s locked up, everyone agrees he’s an actual monster, and yet his word still carries enough weight to put Jack under a microscope and me behind a desk? I thought once we caught him this would all be over. That his power over us would finally be broken. But even from inside his cell he is still turning everything to shit. He’s in there, but god, he may as well be out here!”
Shocked silence from Brian, Jimmy, and every other bar patron in her immediate vicinity. Whoops. A lot of that had come out kind of loud.
Jimmy raises a finger. “Another drink for this woman, please. And another Jack and ginger for me.”
Brian looks grim. “One more thing we can blame Hannibal Lecter for. He’s driven Jimmy back into the sweet embrace of alcoholism.”
“Who says I ever left?” Jimmy turns to Beverly. “What will it be? Another Don Julio?”
“I shouldn’t,” she says, embarrassed. Her hair has fallen into her eyes again and she brushes it away impatiently. She wishes she hadn’t gotten angry. Now there’s a dose of concentrated fury pumping through her system and it isn’t wearing off anytime soon. She is so overcome with the unfairness of it all, she can’t think. “There’s a horde of paparazzi camped outside my building. Last thing I need is TattleCrime publishing photos of me staggering home.”
“A beer then.” Jimmy orders it, then turns back to her. “Where is Will in all of this?”
The abruptness of this question startles her, and Beverly, to her horror, feels actual tears threaten. Just when she thought she couldn’t get any more embarrassing.
Where is Will in all of this? Where, oh, where?
All day, all freaking day she has been compulsively refreshing her inbox, sifting through concerned and/or conniving emails from colleagues, family, friends, Facebook acquaintances, and journalists impersonating all of the above, exposing herself to all manner of nastiness in the hope of receiving a message from Will. But Beverly has gotten nothing from Will except the deadest of radio silences. Clearly he’s back under his rock. She doesn’t resent him for it. Will has earned the right to disengage. But silly Bev, she’d been nursing the belief that even if Will cut the rest of the world out of his life, he’d at least talk to her. Will being Will, he should know that a few words of support from him are all Beverly needs right now. A shared look of commiseration, a little understanding from someone who’s been there and actually gets it.
At first Beverly was comforted by the excuse that Will might not even know what had happened with his being so well-insulated against everything related to the trial. This, she reminded herself, was a good thing. She wished she could live inside a bubble where Hannibal Lecter wasn’t showing up to court every day in fucking couture. But Jack torpedoed this comforting excuse in the very same conversation where he promised Beverly he’d do everything he could to reinstate her.
“Whatever it takes,” he said, cold hand on her shoulder, turmoil in his eyes.
Beverly knew what Jack was tempted to do. Summon Will back to Quantico. Bail one agent out of trouble by sacrificing the emotional stability of another. An impossible choice to have to make.
“Thanks, Jack,” she said, heart pounding. “I love this job. You know I do. But I don’t know if I want it, if the price I pay for keeping it is… that high.”
Jack looked grim. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
And Beverly couldn’t stop herself: she had to ask her burning question. “Is Helen Weaver calling Will? Is he gonna testify?”
“That possibility is under discussion.”
Beverly, who had expected from Jack a simple ‘no,’ or, at the worst, ‘I don’t know,’ was stunned.
“You already talked to Weaver about it?”
Jack only looked at her impassively. “I talked to Will.”
Beverly stared at him with her mouth open. So Will knew everything. And he hadn’t tried to contact Beverly about it.
Jack continued: “I had an agent from the Miami office go down to the boatyard and put a cellphone in Will’s hand.”
She cringed. “He couldn’t have been happy about that.”
Jack shook his head. “Even less happy when he heard what I had to tell him.”
“What did he say?”
Jack observed her for a moment through hooded eyes. Beverly had the distinct impression he was debating the relative merits of sparing her some grief or giving her an honest answer. In the end she couldn’t tell which option he picked, as all he said was:
“‘If she needs me, I’ll come.’”
Beverly blinked. She waited for more. But more was not forthcoming. “…That’s it?”
Jack nodded. “‘If she needs me, I’ll come.’ That’s what he said.”
The lines of Jack’s face were heavy, his expression unreadable. Was this some kind of play? Was Jack trying to tell her something without telling her anything? The words were so simple, so wholly inadequate, and yet for all that, it was exactly the kind of response Beverly should have expected from Will, if not the one she wanted.
“So, Beverly,” Jack continued, as he lowered his chin and drilled Beverly with his eyes, “my question for you is, do you need him?”
He gave her the night to think about it. So here she is, thinking about it.
“Another tequila, please,” she says to the bartender as soon as he hands her a beer.
“I’ll tell you where Will is.” Brian has been watching Beverly darkly. “Same place he’s been this whole time. Laid out on a beach in the Keys while the rest of us deal with his mess.”
Beverly makes a noise of disdain as she starts on her new tequila.
“Nobody’s arguing the man isn’t entitled to a permanent vacation,” Jimmy says, “but he can’t stay in Florida while you face the music. If he isn’t coming back on his own, then somebody has to go down there and fetch him.”
Beverly’s temper leaps. “But what good will it do? Seriously, guys. What does Will coming back here really accomplish?”
Jimmy gapes at her like the words she’s spoken aren’t English. “He’s the only person who can corroborate your testimony. He can tell the judge he didn’t ask you to plant any forensic evidence in Dr. Lecter’s house.”
“He can make all this go away,” Brian says, “if he cared enough to bother.”
“You don’t get it,” says Beverly. “None of this ever goes away. It just moves on to the next target. Character assassination is the name of the game and Lecter’s defense has way more ammunition to use against Will than he had with me. Will shouldn’t have to be subjected to that. Not again. I’m telling you, it isn’t worth it.”
“Of course it’s worth it!” Jimmy looks scandalized. “Beverly, it’s not only your job we’re talking about here. Your reputation, your whole future is on the line and Will could save it for you. I’d get up there if I could. If it’d do any good, I’d take the stand and tell them you wouldn’t contaminate evidence even if there was a gun to your head. I’d do it for you in a heartbeat.”
Brian’s eyes are alight. “And so what if Will goes to court and gets his name dragged around in the press again? What are they gonna do, can him from his high-paying job as a boat mechanic? Confiscate his fishing poles? Laugh and point at him whenever he goes to Margaritaville? Please. And I don’t buy the excuse that Will is so delicate that the very sight of Hannibal Lecter is gonna traumatize him. Last time Will saw Hannibal Lecter he gutted the guy like a fish. I think he’d survive an hour of Lecter giving him the hairy eyeball from across a courtroom. Fuck that guy if he won’t come back for you, Bev. After everything you’ve done for him! The ungrateful bastard—fuck him.”
If she needs me, I’ll come.
Beverly pushes herself unsteadily to her feet.
Brian pauses his tirade to stare at her. “Where are you going?”
“Ladies’ room.”
As she walks off, she hears Jimmy scolding Brian. “Hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“Hey, she needed to hear it. She and Jack both think Will has earned himself a lifetime supply of Get Out of Jail Free cards, and he hasn’t.”
“Nope.” Jimmy sounds sad. “Just the one.”
Beverly locks herself in a stall and stands with her arms tightly crossed, staring into the toilet like it’s a vortex of doom about to suck her down. She is seething with anger: at Brian for being an asshole, at Jimmy for being sweet, at Jack for foisting this clusterfuck of a decision onto her. Now she’s gotta choose between throwing away her position at the Bureau or else being responsible for Will having to see Hannibal Lecter again. Either way, Lecter wins. Lecter always wins.
Her hair is back in her eyes. God, so infuriating. Why’d she get this stupid haircut anyway? Who the hell was she trying to impress? She shoves it behind her ears and covers her hot face with her hands.
The worst thing about this whole situation is that she isn’t really mad at Brian or Jimmy or even Jack. It’s Will she’s pissed with. Will, who went through hell with her and then up and vanished. Will, who won’t even talk to her, instead sending cryptic pronouncements through Jack. If she needs me, I’ll come. What the hell does that mean? Is it a message from Will the Reluctant, clinging to the panhandle for all he’s worth? If she needs me, I guess I’ll come, but I’d much rather slather myself with ethanol and set myself ablaze. Or is it a message from Will the Superhero? If she needs me, just give me a shout on the old Batphone and as soon as I pull on my tights I’ll zipline right over. It could be either Will. It could be both.
And Beverly is mad at herself, too. She’s mad at herself for being mad at Will. She’s mad at herself for being tempted to throw Will under the bus just so she can keep her job (but it isn’t ‘just’ her job; it’s the job she always wanted, the job she earned through years of study and debt and hard work, etc.).
Beverly is even mad at herself for letting Brian and Jimmy fulminate at Will when right now she’s the one with the choice, the one holding their futures in the palm of her hand. She hates lying to her friends. Although she grew used to it during those weeks of helping Will, hiding things is still a mode of behavior alien to her makeup. But there’s just no point in telling them the truth. If Beverly informs Brian of the enigmatic contents of Will’s message, he’ll just keep on raging at Will for being unfeeling and ungrateful (a rage that only exacerbates Beverly’s own) and if she tells Jimmy about it, he will just continue hiding his sorrow behind skeins of loopy wit. Both of them will insist she let Will testify. So why bother entrusting them with this, her secret hardship, when she already knows exactly how they’ll advise her?
Beverly understands now why Will was always so tightlipped. Why bother telling people anything when you can look into the future and predict with hair-trigger accuracy everything they’ll say and everything they’ll do in response to what you tell them? It’s like you’ve told them already.
If she needs me, I’ll come.
Why has Will given Beverly this choice? Which option is he predicting she’ll take? She stares into the toilet, wishing it were a tunnel into his unreachable mind.
She has that old familiar feeling of being a piece on a massive chessboard, moved at whim one square closer to sacrifice. Who’s playing now? Lecter versus Will? Will versus Jack? Jack versus Lecter? Doesn’t matter. All Beverly knows is that despite this supposedly being her ‘choice,’ she’s still just a pawn in somebody else’s game. Never even allowed to see the whole board.
She gives her eyes one final rub and emerges from the stall. As she washes her hands, she carefully avoids her reflection in the graffitied mirror. She doesn’t want to see her flushed face or her swollen eyes or her hair, which has gone so long without flat ironing that it’s becoming kind of a frizz nest.
“Rough night?” a sly voice asks.
Beverly looks up from the sink. In the mirror she sees Freddie Lounds leaning against the paper towel dispenser. She is wearing a purple leather biker jacket and a facial expression all but advertising the fact that she just heard every single second of Beverly crying in the stall.
“Well, now it is,” says Beverly.
To which Freddie smiles. “I’m guessing they’ve all been rough nights since your day in court.”
“Good guess.”
Beverly shuts off the sink. Freddie tries to hand her a paper towel. Rather than take it, Beverly flicks her wet hands at the floor near Freddie’s ankle boots.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but you aren’t getting a story out of me.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” Freddie’s eyebrows knit together seriously. “Off the record. I want to express something you’re probably not seeing a lot of these days: my sincere, heartfelt support.”
Beverly just looks at her, deadpan. So Freddie tries again.
“We have to support each other, Beverly. You know as well as I do that this business isn’t the most forgiving. We’ve had to fight a lot harder for what we’ve got, and when we screw up, we’re laughed into the ground, treated to the full chorus of ‘I told you so’s.’ We suffer in silence, not only because we’re afraid of being seen as weak, but also because there are so few people around us who even understand what we’re going through.”
“Girl power?” Beverly asks. “Seriously? Pull the other one.”
Freddie is indefatigable. “You may not want to believe it, but I have always been on your side of this thing. When it came to Hannibal Lecter, you were asking the smart questions before anyone even thought to ask the stupid ones. Stopping Lecter’s spree by getting a protective detail assigned to him? Genius. You went out on your own and took big risks for a cause you believed in. I have nothing but respect for that. Frankly, it’s the same work ethic I try to employ in my own pursuit of justice.”
Oh, great. For the first time Beverly wonders if she actually did do something unethical in helping Will if it so impressed Freddie Lounds, of all people.
“You have some nerve,” she says.
“Yes.” Freddie takes it as a compliment, of course. “So do you. You’re worth more than this, Beverly, you know that. You’re not just some little FBI scapegoat or the bait in Hannibal Lecter’s mousetrap. Don’t lie down and let them use you as their prop.”
Beverly raises a cutting brow. “Thank you for the pep talk, Beyoncé, but I’m not desperate enough to take advice from Hannibal Lecter’s very own Boswell.”
This would be a good moment for Beverly to storm out of the bathroom, but something stops her. Maybe it’s the prospect of returning to Brian and Jimmy and the contemplation of the impossible choice that sits before her. But maybe it’s something in Freddie’s voice, so bare and honest even about her own predation. She wears her manipulative nature openly, unlike Will and Lecter and Jack, who tug at Beverly’s strings with varying degrees of deliberation and craft, all while pretending to be doing nothing of the kind.
Freddie notices Beverly isn’t going anywhere. She presses her luck, joins her at the row of sinks so that they can speak eye-to-eye instead of through the mirror.
“I don’t work for Hannibal.”
“Uh huh. You’ve written, like, fifty articles for him.”
“I humor Hannibal, because I need to stay close to him. He’s the motherlode, Beverly. He is, in his very essence, a great story, probably the greatest of my career. Only problem is, he’s too damn brilliant to give it up. He lets me have little glimpses every now and then because he knows it keeps me interested, but he’s never gonna pull back the curtain. So I stick with him and collect those glimpses, I collect them and I connect them, because someday, maybe even someday soon, Hannibal is going to let slip more than he intends, and I’ll have enough to complete the picture.”
Freddie, all wide eyes and flared nostrils, is more earnest than Beverly has ever seen her. Beverly, to her surprise, finds herself feeling almost sorry for her. However shrewd the woman may be—and Freddie is one sneaky motherfucker—she isn’t immune to Lecter’s spell.
“Don’t hold your breath. There’s only one person who’s ever gonna understand Hannibal Lecter, and sorry, Freddie—it isn’t you.”
“Will Graham,” Freddie breathes, like he’s the Holy Grail. “You’re one of the select few who has his address I bet.”
Beverly smiles humorlessly. “I’m not sharing.”
“I’m not asking you to. The only thing I want you to do is talk to him.”
Freddie has to say this to Beverly’s back, for Beverly is already heading for the exit.
Of course that’s what Freddie wants from her. An ‘in’ with Will. What a terrific miscalculation on Freddie’s part. Even if Beverly did have reliable contact with Will, she’d never act as a go-between for Freddie. God, Beverly wants to take a shower just thinking about it.
As she pushes the bathroom door open, she feels Freddie’s fingers wrap around her forearm.
She breathes into Beverly’s ear: “Will can’t be allowed to testify. You have to stop him.”
The words go through Beverly like a shockwave.
Will coming back to testify would make for a great story—and the story is all Freddie cares about. So what’s her angle here?
Beverly relaxes her hands on the door.
“Ok,” she says, “why don’t you take your claw off me, and then you can explain why I should do that.”
Freddie, relieved, releases her and gestures for Beverly to follow her back into the bathroom. Together they hover clandestinely near the tampon vending machine.
“Like I said,” whispers Freddie, “I’ve been sticking close to Hannibal. I’ve had the opportunity to study him, and though he may play a lot of games, there’s one subject I know he’s serious about: Will Graham.”
“Hate to break it to you,” says Beverly, “but that’s no scoop.”
“But don’t you see?” Freddie’s eyes go impossibly wider. “It’s the one thing I know for sure Hannibal really cares about. And how can I trust the one thing I know for sure about Hannibal Lecter? The first time I interviewed him, I walked away from our session convinced he was in love with Will. But Beverly—that’s what he wanted me to think! That’s what he wants us all to think!”
“So what are you saying? That Lecter… isn’t really in love with Will?” Beverly realizes, as she asks this, just how much she would like it to be true.
Freddie hesitates. “I can’t presume to know what’s going on inside Hannibal’s mind, let alone his heart. But I am certain his whole lovelorn routine is a soft-shoe. It’s just too convenient, it explains too much. Hannibal is trying to convince the world that everything he does at trial is in the name of luring Will back to Baltimore, because he’s just that desperate to lay eyes on his beloved again, finding nourishment at the very sight of him and all that crap. It’s an act. It’s all an act with him, Beverly. That isn’t the real reason he wants Will to testify.”
“Then what is?”
Freddie shakes her head, hair bouncing gravely.
Beverly knows better. “You think Will is in on this with Lecter.”
“Not consciously. Not necessarily. I’ve seen firsthand how Lecter operates. He gets into people’s heads. You know he got into Will’s, probably burrowed in there so deep they’ll never extract him. I don’t know what Will is going to say if the prosecution calls him to the stand, but I am certain it’s gonna be bad for everyone. Maybe it will help Lecter beat the death penalty. Maybe it will exculpate him entirely. I don’t know. And I don’t want to find out.”
Beverly’s heart is beating fiercely. She can’t accept this.
If she needs me, I’ll come.
“You’re wrong about Will,” she says.
“I’m not wrong about Hannibal.” Freddie takes a step closer to Beverly, gets right up in her personal space. “You know what he is. You know what he’s capable of. He wants Will in that courtroom more than he wants anything in the world right now. We can’t give it to him.”
They stare at each other. It’s a standoff. Freddie’s poker face is just about as good as Beverly’s own.
“Well,” says Freddie, “I’ve said my piece.” She reaches inside her jacket for a business card and holds it out to Beverly.
“If things don’t work out with the FBI, give me a call. There are other opportunities out there for you.”
Maybe it’s the tequila urging her along, but this time Beverly takes what’s being offered to her. She shoves Freddie’s card into her pants pocket, then turns to go.
“Oh and Beverly,”—a twinkle in Freddie’s eye—“love the hair.”