Chapter Text
The lecture hall is relatively quiet. Relatively full, too. Will Graham had expected to see fewer faces; secretly, he even welcomed poor attendance to this particular event. Too bad for him: most seats are occupied, hushed voices filling up the room with a quiet buzz, like that of TV static. The guest who is about to step on the podium seems to interest many, even if the topic of conversation is mundane. Behaviour in violence… like it is the theory that brought all those sharp tongues, eyes, and ears to listen. Does the guest speaker know he’s a display behind thin glass? A curious exotic paraded in front of the audience.
It feels almost insulting to be present. Will, however, keeps walking carefully toward the stage and to the left. Subjecting himself – without any right for protest, of course – to intellectual indignation, he sits down on one of the chairs lining the wall. Nods absently to the similarly conflicted colleagues: some inquisitive, some resigned. Most reluctant. Does not even react when someone approaches and sits down in the empty spot beside him. Finally flinches when a slightly unsure ghost of a touch brushes his shoulder.
“Hey, Will,” a little more than a whisper, drowning immediately in the calm waves of voices around them.
“Alana,” Will exhales with a sardonic imitation of a smile, glancing sideways and not lingering for more than a moment, “Sorry, I think I missed you coming. Good to see you.”
He had only looked for a brief second, yet he still managed to take notice of her lips stretching into a soft little grin; the rest he can piece together in his mind automatically. It is a sight that grounds and reminds him of the surroundings. The slight crinkle by her eye is a thread tying him to some pole or railing, not letting him float off too far; the dim blue of her iris is the drag that slows his velocity. There is a small impulse to look again to check if these details are still there, but the pleasantries are interrupted by the voice of the chair of the lecture.
“Alright, settle down! It is my pleasure to introduce our guest lecturer today, Dr Hannibal Lecter, a distinguished surgeon and psychiatrist, whose research and work, as we all know, explores the very limits of behavioural science. Please join me in welcoming Dr Lecter.”
Applause. Will joins on instinct, along with everyone else.
There he is, the strange man standing on the border of radical opposites. Dressed impeccably, just as in magazines, discussing some success in psychiatry. Not quite Will’s expertise, but still stark enough to notice occasionally when sifting through a dated academic journal full of theses that were always heavy on the eyelids. The same sharp face and the same polite grin as in the pictures. Only slightly older now. Despite all his reservations, Will is pleasantly surprised by the seemingly very sane appearance of the guest. He expected a gown, no less, or a cassock. Instead, a three-piece suit: fabric red, as if sewn from red wine, tastefully outdated in the most European way; a carefully ironed shirt, black, lined by small and shiny dark buttons. Every detail tailored to perfection by a steady, distinguished hand. And one little stripe of white dipping into the black shirt right below his Adam's apple. The edge of Will’s lips twitches up, a wrinkle forms between his eyebrows. Is it amusement? Annoyance? Both or neither, no matter. He leans back, his phalanges curling and uncurling in a ritualistic and absent motion as he whispers to Alana next to him:
“The guy’s wearing his clerical collar.”
She shrugs, while Will feels her light gaze on his temple.
“It’s his calling. I’d wear it too, if I were him,” her voice is soft, but her acceptance of this weird display makes Will shake his head subtly.
When he looks back up and makes his gaze focus on the figure on the podium, he suddenly finds their eyes meet. This Dr Lecter looks back, his gaze pointed; too far to make out the colour, but certainly dark enough to turn into pitch-black under the shadow of his pronounced brow ridge. Feels like a cold shot of metal somewhere between Will’s eyes and through his skull on a downwards diagonal. It carves out a thin tube of emptiness in the brain in its wake, scooping out matter, neat and crosscutting. Forces to look away first. Will does just that.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”
What a strange accent. Will spares another glance. To Alana, first: she looks upon the stage with interest and polite admiration. Then, to the stage: Dr Lecter stands with his hands folded behind him, relaxed and confident. His expression remains static. The same small smile.
Graham’s hands go limp by his sides the moment the applause starts to die down. He is but a single speck on this pattern, surely too small to notice.The subtle disrespect in his expression should go unnoticed, too.
It is all holy bells and shrouds upon faces too dark in his memory to revive. Quiet voices advising for what they are not equipped to advise; hands interlinked together in a mockery of meaning, too illusory and shallow to be true. Bless our bread, Holy Father, bless our wine. Did He? If He did, the blessing was malicious. The communion bread turned sour on Will’s tongue, fast enough to be swallowed unnoticed. Yet it was enough to forsake, and the moment his jaws clamped down on the tasteless tart, he felt and saw what no one else did – he felt and saw the Other. Nude and raw, not meant for anyone, yet still visible. He peered into the skull of the Other, wore the Other’s skin, felt the bolts turn in the Other’s head. It was – and is still – like a mosaic of experiences meant for the Other that were imposed on Will against his choice, ones he was forced to brandish and sew himself from. And now, an avatar of the tyrannic past, teaching a lecture in the house of fact, dressed in subtle fiction.
“We are all taught to treat violence as irrational and unpredictable. However, once one tastes all the astringency of the human psyche, they might conclude that this view of violence is incorrect. I did,” the man paused, looking over the upturned faces in the audience with a slow and measured gaze. “In my experience, a more precise way to describe what it is would be this: a machine. Outlandish, perhaps, but still structured. I am sure you’ve learned all about that already. I am here to discuss precisely the anatomy of violence. The smallest gesture can be a flap of the butterfly’s wings that tips a situation into a radical direction. To understand that is to see the entire lethal potential in every possible situation. Your task is not only to diagnose the results of violence, but to anticipate it, after all.”
He moves slowly, stepping around the lectern. His fingers snake around the microphone set up for him, pulling it out of its place and holding it up to his lips. No longer contained by that single square meter of space meant for him, it alienates him even more – he is unlike what Graham is used to. Will has always been grateful for the invisible borders the lectern built around his shoulders and feet; the space neatly divided into “here” and “there” with a guarded frontier splitting him from the others. Maybe, a placebo of sorts, that left his mind at peace.
Lecter stands at the very edge of the stage now. The anatomy of violence, down to every detail, the most human expression of aggression. Will listens despite himself. Aggressively humane. Humanely aggressive. It feels like a dance of a serpent, hypnotising with its ritualistic patterns of repetition. Senses sharpen to focus on that movement. Even if Will is unwilling, it does not matter. The misty silk of the words spoken from the podium invites him to peer behind the eyes of the strange man. Aggressive... humane. Natural. Or is it? Such power at his fingertips. The microphone, which he holds with gentleness unmatched, could easily be replaced with a spine.
“...so, a logical follow-up to that question would be: ‘when’? And of course: ‘who’? In this particular problem, it could be any of you. A man, a woman, a human being , virtually no different from the one whose fate you will determine. Regarding the “when?” – well, that is more complicated. Any action requires preparation. Minute changes reflect that; even before the intent is conscious, the body adjusts. The centre of gravity, for instance, is one of the most telling signs – its change is a predictable upbeat of a sudden change in behaviour.”
Will’s fingers twitch, and he exhales, blinking, his neck stiff. The others seem entranced, in a way. Doubt dissolves, and seeds of understanding are sewn. How much time has passed? He glances at the clock – forty-three minutes already. Somehow, his subjective disgust towards Lecter morphs into faint... What, interest? No, not quite. That man does not inspire interest. He shifts the clean classification of distance erected to separate him from everyone else – and Will, too. He sounds like a clinician, not clergy. Yet that collar, that collar, it keeps staring back at Will with its mocking whiteness.
This lecture better end soon.
And it does. Eventually. In the end, responsibility lies with us. “Us” as in “you”.
Graham stands a bit too early, pulled away from the eerie topic, while everyone else only finishes clapping. Naturally, that invites some eyes. He hates it and he hates that his knees buckle for a moment to sit back down under their pressure even more. It is instinct that guides him in this moment to stay fused with the crowd. It is always easier to stay fused with the crowd. He stays still, enduring the eyes, noticing Alana’s shadow grow behind him: she stands up, too. Out of habit, of course – she’d become an anchor out of her own volition and now is tied with an invisible pull to him. Pity is a strong emotion, easily nudged onto those kind enough to allow it in. When the two of them are up on their feet, the attention diffuses from them onto the general area, and suddenly they are the ones the crowd fuses into: the others stand, too, a small crowd growing by the stage and a big one by the exit. Will hears faint murmurs of conversation – questions to the lecturer, comments and inquiries. He does not want to participate; instead, he makes his way through to the door of the auditorium. Elbows raised, brushing against figures as he passes them. Now, for the lounge.
“How are you feeling, then?” Alana’s voice interrupts an unintelligible train of thought.
“...What?”
“Hannibal is good, isn’t he?”
A name befitting the accent. Will can still hear the faint church bells tolling.
“Sure,” he responds.
Her presence is so subtle that he always feels a little surprised she is still there. There’s this expectation to be left alone; he wants to be, at some level.
They are out of the auditorium now, walking down the hall towards the staircase leading up to the main floor of the university. He looks sideways at her; his brow slightly furrowed in the habitual hard look of his. Alana does not mind, nor does she seem to notice, watching the top of the staircase, her mind apparently somewhere else.
“I had the pleasure of working with him when he was still practicing psychiatry,” she muses, her heels clicking in syncopation, “He was brilliant.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Finally, the stairs are behind them. The hall stretches out long and endlessly boring. Familiarity in every crevice between baseboards and the plaster of walls, in the spacing between announcements and boards, in the slightly stale air of a space where many people pass, and windows are rarely opened. Will prefers silence and footsteps over unnecessarily spoken words. They continue in relatively comfortable silence, rarely punctuated by passersby or breaths just loud enough to reflect off the walls audibly. The deeper they go, the quieter the halls and stairwells they pass become – the lecture was late, and most students are heading for the ground floor to exit the academy, not up. Still, there are occasional faces Will civilly nods to, as they hurry to go home or elsewhere in the big building.
Finally, there is the door to the staff lounge. Will pushes it open, expecting darkness inside; instead, the lights overhead diffuse cold beams onto the walls and floors and furniture, turning the entire hue of the plain room into an almost sterile white. It is brighter than outside, and Will squints at the figure appearing right in front of him, brushing Alana off with a lax wave of the hand. Crawford. They have met before.
"Will Graham," the man offers his calloused hand that breeds everything but affection within Will. "I'm sure you remember me."
"I'm sure I do," Will responds, looking down at the extended fingers like they are hazardous.
Still, he takes the hand and shakes it grudgingly, feeling the millions of pores on his skin collide with Crawford's. It is a process of which Will is disgustingly aware; skin surface covered with bacteria, a billion tiny bodies swarming and bustling. Tactile communication feels revolting.
Alana watches the two men shake hands, a somewhat concerned expression on her face. She seems distrustful, wary, as if waiting for something bad to happen. Eventually, something does happen, bad or otherwise:
"I need the opinion of an expert," Crawford retracts his hand, immediately bringing it up to adjust his collar; Will watches him smear the microscopic dirt over his collar and thinks about a sink. "You're the expert. Shall we?"
Graham blinks. How bloody is this one, that they want the thoughts of the red herring? Not really red, of course. More like overwhelmingly grey, just twitchy enough to be noticed and to be worried about. A last resort, shameful and unpredictable by nature. His eyes wander, nomadic travellers that never stay somewhere too long: Crawford's sleeve, black and slightly dusty; grey laminated flooring, utterly depressing; the tip of his own left shoe, heavy and visibly tired from scraping the edges of stairs or curbs or messing in wet grass. Jack stands before him motionlessly, upsetting the otherwise fidgeting and ever-changing scenery, like a stone in the middle of a windy field.
"Will?" Alana's voice now. Like a lifebuoy.
"...You know I am not authorised to work on the cases, Jack."
"Sure. You won't be on-site. Just share your thoughts."
Will stuffs his hands in his pockets, jerking his chin down in a hint of a nod. The Other invades the carefully constructed space around him, unknowingly breaching it, reaching in. Will tilts his head almost in unison with Jack as the latter tries to establish eye contact. Behind the dark iris of Agent Crawford, there are cogs, a sum of parts that is together called 'Jack'. The cogs are the cadence, they are the gesture, they are the thought and the reaction – humans *are* reactive, after all – combining into a three-dimensional material organism. Will is drawn to dissect it and use it as patches for the fabric of mixed identity surrounding him. A snip there, a snap here... his posture shifts. His speech grows louder. His diction gets clearer. All just simple instinct, aimed toward survival.
"What's the opinion for?"
"Here," the agent offered a file.
As Will skims through the contents, a chemical reaction takes place in his organism. Norepinephrine spikes, dopamine acts as the transmitter. Two states entirely opposite of each other mix into one, as the heart rate rises. Anticipation. His fingers ghost over the pages, soon finding the most interesting part of the otherwise sleep-inducing dossier: Photographs of a young brunette man sprawled out on a forest floor greet his gaze. Pale. Dead. No older than twenty-five. Flowers – big, half-withered, in his hair. Surrounded by rotting fabric and fruits, dressed in a dirty cloth. From every possible angle: from the left, from the right, top-down and from a distance. Hollowed out cheeks and empty eyes upturned toward the sky, expression vacant and muddy. How would it feel to lie there now?
"How long was he there for?"
"Not much. We don't have exact numbers yet. Less than a day, apparently."
A few hours under the monotonous skies, watching mindlessly as clouds pass by. The most peaceful hours in the entire course of one's life are so benevolently bestowed upon such youthful features. A gift.
Will lifts one of the pictures, looking closely at the setup around the body. No, that is not it.
"Jack," Alana's voice cuts the hazy and dim fog of thought that covered Graham, pulling him out once more; although this time, he glances up at her with slight frustration in his gaze. "Can we talk for a moment?"
Crawford's eyes peel off of Will's hands, and he turns his head. To look her in the eye. Then back to Will, questioning. Will blinks, frowning at first. Little muscles beneath the skin of his face contract slightly out of order and timing. The puzzling expression is finished off with a shrug. Jack nods.
"Take your time," the words are aimed at Graham, but he slips back in before they are uttered, enveloping himself in a shell of imaginary faces and motivations, too invested to even make out who exactly said it – Alana Bloom, or Jack Crawford.
Footsteps moving out of the room. It is not a gift; there is rot around. It is intentional if the body had only been there for a day. The rot, blooming into black bustling masses of worms and insects, is, too, set there by the killer; the flowers, half-dry and soon to wither, are not a crown but a mockery. The door clicks closed behind Will. One gifts with care, even if it is by taking something away. Here, with death, a ridicule of elegance was given instead. There is a piece missing. He cannot figure it out, a bit of information that could illuminate the scene. Voices behind the now closed door ring out. He treats the machine that others call the body as a canvas, ripe for covering with paint of his expression, or someone else's, if he wishes to capture theirs. Essence, it seems, is central. The crown of flowers, the cloth... the milky pale skin. It tightly covers the young bones that hold the canvas upright. There are marks on it, ones he left there on purpose. The door clicks once again, opening now. He holds the skin and flesh and bone until the arteries pop, tainting the purity of this perfect paleness; he wants to show the essence of the canvas, so that its face does not fool anyone anymore. He wishes to show the dirt and the rot that can take hold of a beautiful vessel. It pretended to be pure, clean. The betrayal changed everything. There was nothing left but to expose that to the world.
"Will?"
Graham looks up and turns to face the sound of his name with a somewhat shellshocked expression.
"You alright?" Alana asks, standing beside Jack in the open frame of the door.
Will's eyes glide over their expressions briefly, not lingering for too long. Enough to read the surface, not enough to slip further. Bloom's expression is stoic, Crawford's is annoyed. They were having a lovely chat just now. Graham feels a lingering sensation of stickiness on the back of his neck. A lovely chat about him, it seems.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
The file is still in his hands, opened yet forgotten momentarily. Alana's nose wrinkles as she catches a glance of the pictures laid out in his hands. Jack approaches, taking the dossier from him. His hands are empty now, so is he; the weight of the day is catching up to him and settling down onto his shoulders.
"This killer is an artist," Will started, closing the folder.
"Let's chat about it another time, Will. I'm running late for some errands," Agent Crawford cuts the conversation, eyeing Alana with visible frustration.
Will connects the silence that follows with the absence that preceded it. A moment, then a slow blink – understanding – and an unconscious flex of his jaw. Control keeps staying out of his reach, the reins always taken from him by someone else. Alana likes that role. The conductor. He wonders how hard it must be for her to hold back her natural interest in seeing how things would play out in a volatile situation, yet she seems to consider herself someone who separates Will and volatility. Pity, once more, is crucial and a very useful point of pressure, after all. It carves out a niche for him to fit into. Otherwise, he'd be out in the open, and he would be volatile. For security, one must trade something as precious as control.
His chin jerks to signal acceptance, his hands move automatically and in perfect synchronisation with his feet: grabbing his jacket, his bag, throwing the heavy fabric over his shoulders and anchoring it down with a worn leather belt over his shoulder. A comforting routine that dictates he now takes seven steps forward towards the door, then walks for two minutes before leaving the university, and two more after that, to the parking lot.
He does not think about formality, so when he is outside, he cannot even be sure if he said goodbye to Jack and Alana. No matter – the goodbye is futile, anyway, since they will inevitably meet once more. The rumble of the starting car almost startles him as he finds himself already sitting in it, left hand on the steering wheel. These flashes of the conscious returning from imagination to reality are only separated by blinks.
The photos are stuck with him. The imagery is vivid in his mind, details inhibiting every corner. He keeps finding rotten figs and apples scattered across the floors of the irregular train that is his thought. Withering flowers decorate the entrance that keeps fazing into existence in different places. On the left, on the right, above, below.
And that Hannibal Lecter. Will isn't sure at what point the fruits were replaced by candles. Walls sprout out from around the rotting body, the skin folds into marble and the flowers bloom into mosaics. The chapel of his mind is full, little people inside it listening to a giant bell propelled by strong whips of a rope held by that strange man. Natural violence. Was that dead boy found in a forest an expression of natural human violence? If that were to be true, then that would mean it was also an expression of divinity. In His picture, we were created. Graham found himself wondering how Dr Lecter would respond to that conclusion.
He'd protest, probably. He is a priest, after all.
The car halts as Will notices a shadow dart by the side of the road, with a rigid tail and inquisitive eyes that reflect the glow of the headlights. A dog. Graham leaves the engine running as he slips out of his seat into the dark outside. The cold air dulls his senses.
"Hey, dude," you might not see it, but I, too, have a tail, sharp canines, and nowhere else to go. Come.