Waking. It was like crawling out of an abyss of razors and glass. Cutting through flesh and peeling it back, revealing organs and blood. Living organisms that he thought should have shut down a long time ago. He was good now. That’s what he had heard. Vague recollection from a dream he knew that he hadn’t had. He was somehow a different man. Although mostly he didn’t feel like a man at all. Beast mostly. Like something had managed to claw it’s way under his skin and consume his insides. He wanted death. He craved absolution. Yet somehow Graham felt himself toeing the line to hell, and alive. Still alive. Beat up old relic he was.
Days. That’s how he counted time now. Because time seemed insignificant when you were in a spot you didn’t want to be in. A world that was not of your making. Catch him. Run. But his legs were sore and weak. Loss of feeling. Loss of self. Vacations were meant to find your spirit. And yet the inner voice of Graham wondered what if he had none.
"Dr. Lecter? My name is Clarice Starling, I'm a trainee with the Academy. Agent Crawford has asked me to request a psych examination from you. When would be most convenient?"
It wasn't that he wanted to see him. That couldn't be it. He had to see him. Maybe it was a form of self therapy. But he hadn't ever been constructed for therapy. He had little faith in it. There was only make belief fiction in his mind and he knew that he was going to have to go behind the curtains eventually.
Only he knew that he was terrified. He had worn himself down with the drinking. Lost all sense of everything but the numbness that coursed it's way through him. He had lost.
And that sounded bitter. Like a sore loser losing at a game he had never been entirely sure he was playing at. Having never read the rules entirely. He knew all the moves and the intentions. But not the rules. He had lost.
But who had won?
He was walking slow now, listening to the warden telling him what to do and not do. A list. Long and unnecessary. Graham was aware of the shake down in Chiltons hospital. He didn't need repetition.
And then he was there. For a moment nothing had changed, had it? He was just recently pulled out of the quiet house in Sugarloaf with Molly. Just pulled away from relishing and living. And tossed towards the Dolarhyde case. This was a repeat of the past. And he could do it all over again.
Only he wasn't naive. He was aware of what this was. Not a repeat but a struggle. A last trick in the game that Hannibal Lecter liked to make out of everyones life that came into contact with his own.
He knew that he would never get a do over. When he went back home it would be to an empty hot box of a trailer in Florida. Not the beach house. Molly wasn't going to be there waiting, with salt on her skin and a smile. She had a way of making things easy. Even with her worries, even with her fears of girlish things like the dark. Everything was easy with Molly. He lived with her. Willy would be gone. Closest thing to having a son. Now his chances were shot to shit. He wasn't ever gonna get to retake those steps.
So why was he here?
Doctor Lecter stood and Will felt a rage of fear swell in him. An unbound hatred. A wave of darkness wash over him. Thick and dirty, as if everything he ever saw, even things in others eyes was being thrown back at him.
"You wear them well." It wasn't rude. It was said after the greeting and Will's ignoring. It was said softly as if the man before him was capable of having sympathy for someone.
Wore them well. As if he could choose the way he wore the scars on his face. Thick, jagged and ugly. He wanted to yell at Dr. Lecter. He wanted to say that even now he was not like him, even now that the festering ugliness of all the minds he had been inside, the ugliness that had crafted a spot for itself inside of his mind, even now he was not the same as him.
But he was still. It took a moment for him to even realize that he was actually breathing. It was suffocating to be in this room. It was suffocating to look at Dr. Lecter now. Fear pounded, and a deep ache that he had long carried with him. A sear of something quick across his abdomen. Senses overactive now. His mind jumping across a plain of memories.
"Did you get my letter?"
And he could bear no more. He took in a breath. He took in the smell of madness. He wanted to stand but he didn't. He would though. He had not come to watch the animal in his cage. Funny thought. Dr. Lecter was less animal than he was. Graham was aware that he had been injected at birth. None of them were madness. They just were. Scars and all.
Terrible. Frightened. But he had to settle himself against the thought.
Abigail was happy. She was outside with the dogs now. And she was laughing. Only in the depths of his imagination had Abigail emerged with a smile like the one she was wearing on her face now. That made it easier to settle into this.
And Hannibal was in the kitchen cooking. It smelled good as it always did. Something fresh. Orderly. Everything seemed in the right place. His mind was no longer the mixed up chaos that he was used to. It was quiet there, easy. And he felt at peace for once.
The night before had not been this quiet calm. He could still feel the eagerness racing through him, the steady beat of his heart in his ears. Never too fast, his hands didn't even shake. And he had felt at home, alive suddenly. Not as alone as he thought.
And now the dinner smells even better as he moves along to the kitchen. It's wide and spacious. Which was what they had looked for. An eagerness to set it up, to make it perfect. Everything today seems perfect in Wills eyes. Like the real scales have fallen and he is who he should have accepted a long time ago.
"Need a hand?" he asks Hannibal as he leans on the kitchen counter.
He gets a small smile in return but the dinner is already prepared.
