Chapter Text
She drives to the country after classes are done for the day, out to where the roads get dusty and winding, empty but for the occasional chirp of a bird and brush of a squirrel. It reminds her of home, distantly, in a way that makes her want to turn right around and drive back to the familiar concrete walls of her dorm. But she doesn’t, if she could walk through the gates of the hospital for the insane, make her way unguarded and unprotected, past lewd shrieks and meaningless murmurs, make her way to him, certainly this visit, somewhere safe, she can handle. The ghosts of her past have danced closer to her these past few days, summoned by a smooth accented tongue, but she brushes them away with the bright headlights of her car. This isn’t a social call and, in the end, has almost nothing to do with her at all.
He’s not what she expected when he answers the door, but then, little about this case has been. Will Graham had looked taller in the article clippings Google had provided, in the mug shot from the FBI database, looked stronger then, more determined. The files on him had been carefully locked though, that’s why she’s here after all. Because other than the sensationalist articles of the tabloids, she’s had nothing to go on, her better instincts telling not to ask Jack. Well, nothing except a small envelope that had been left on her desk with neat script on it, wishing her good luck, asking that she be careful. Beverly Katz, the signature had echoed in her ears as she’d emptied out the contents of it, had found pictures of Will Graham from before the Lecter case, teaching in a classroom much like her own, surrounded by dogs on a comfortable porch, and the last one, deep in conversation, but smiling, an easy calm gracing his face, one absent from all the other pictures, as he’d looked up at one Hannibal Lecter, dressed to the nines, a small smile of his own playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Clarice Starling.” She says now as he looks at her, bewildered, her badge coming up to the side of her head. For a moment, she thinks he’s going to slam the door in her face, the quiet hurt behind his eyes raging to life, but then just as suddenly it dies again and he moves aside, almost grudgingly, as though letting someone into his home requires him to force himself. She doesn’t comment and follows. Silence reigns after the thud of the door.
“I- I’ve been assigned - “ She starts and then shakes her head, lets the lies about a profile and housekeeping die on her tongue, Will will see right through them, her gut whispers in her ear, it’s that which has gotten her into this much trouble already, so she might as well see this through. “You’ve heard of Buffalo Bill, haven’t you?”
They’re in his kitchen, he sits, she stands. The searching look he gives her is reminiscent of the one she’d felt outside the cell, as though he can see everything about her with a glance, can tell just by looking, everything she wants most to hide.
“I can’t do that anymore.” His gaze points down to the table, his fingers are clenched into each other on top of the table, knuckles gone white. “Go back to Jack and tell him I can’t… that I won’t.” The words creep out of his throat as though they’re strangling him. “He shouldn’t have sent you.”
There’s an inexplicable ache that thrums through her as she shakes her head. “That’s uh not exactly why I’m here.” A pause and then. “And Jack didn’t send me, I just thought...it might be important, would help me understand. There aren’t exactly many people I could go to.” She could barely even imagine there to be one. Will looks at her uncomprehendingly and she realizes she’s left more or less everything out.
“Doctor Lecter.” She tries to say it firmly, bravely, like he’s not wormed his way into her mind, like she doesn’t half feel as though even mentioning him might be enough to make him aware of this meeting. Her voice wavers a little anyway, but she doesn’t think Will can hear her, not really. At the name, his head snaps up sharply and his eyes lose focus, far away suddenly, for all their power. “Jack thinks he knows something about the case, he sent me over to the hospital…” She pushes onward all the same. “to try and, I don’t know, surprise something out of him I guess.” Her lips curl in a half smile. “Almost worked.”
He’s still staring out, but his voice drags from his lips hoarsely. “So what is it you need from me, then. You think I can get it out of him?” There’s bitterness nestled deep, she can feel its sharp, familiar, tang on her lips, underneath there’s something like a layer of envy, she doesn’t know what to make of that.
Her shoulders shrug, she’s not sure exactly, exactly, what she thinks Will could do, but victims aside, there’s really no one else. Jack counts himself out, and that’s it, no one more alive. “I need a way in.” She says in the end, simple truth. “I need to know if there’s a way in, and you’re the only one I think has any idea.”
He laughs at that, an empty, ugly, laugh that’s exhausted, lined with old pain. “Sure.” His gaze is on her now, and she takes a step back despite herself, he’s not dangerous, she knows, was proven innocent of every charge, “because our relationship went, oh so well.”
“It went.” She answers back, surprising herself with her own firmness, this is hard for him, she reminds her mouth, but people’s lives are at stake and no one knows Lecter better. “That’s more than most can say.” Certainly more than she managed to do today, Hannibal’s sharp mind poking through the ruse, but she hadn’t known anyway, that she was participating, not that she’d have done much better if she had. “And if he knows something, Mr. Graham, we need to know it too. I don’t think I have to tell you that.”
“No.” Will is standing now, turning his back on her and heading out to the living room, “No I don’t think you do.”
She thinks if he’d wanted her to follow, he’d have invited her along, so she waits quietly in her spot. A part of her wants to look around, to dig deeper, but she’s already intruding enough on this stranger’s private territory. He’s one of them, she should show some respect, she doesn’t let even her gaze pry farther.
When Will comes back he’s balancing three big binders in his hands and he sets them down on the table and looks at her and that’s invitation enough. She moves closer as he straightens, her hands going out to run along the surface of the first one.
“What’s in them?” Her voice is quiet as her fingers grasp the cover, ready to pull the binder open but still waiting for a permission of sorts.
Will’s shoulders shrug, an amusement of sorts coloring his voice, a strained kind of affection. “Letters.”
“Letters?” She echos, bewildered before he can say anything else, and he nods as she pulls the thick plastic back, sees neat handwriting lining a page slipped under a sheet protector.
“Yeah, letters. Well -” Their eyes meet before he pulls his gaze away, but long enough for the self deprecation to slide through the connection. “Well, copies of letters. You can read them if you want.” He might have tried for flippancy, but it doesn’t go over too well. “There’s nothing in them really, if I thought they’d have been useful to anyone but Chilton.” He spits the name out and she can’t help but warm to him, a low hum of commiseration falling from her lips. “I’d have turned them over.”
She wants to tell him he probably should have turned them over anyway, but something about the shift in his stance makes her think it’s a useless fight. And she’s not here to search Will Graham’s house, she’s here to meet Hannibal Lecter in the safest possible way.
It’s unsurprising then when Will adds, “You can read them here. It … it has to be here.”
She gives him a half nod and sits, not yet reading, angling up to look at him. “He wrote you letters?” It’s not that she’s surprised really, it just seems like such a frank, innocent, way of communication. There must be hundreds between the binders, more like Hannibal is a soldier gone away to war than a killer who once put this man on death row.
“Well, he can’t call.” Will’s face twists, something a little less ugly now, the faded, painful, fondness still there. “And I won’t… I won’t come, so he writes, yes.”
“How often?” She asks, but he only jerks his head at the binders.
“Often enough.”
Maybe it was a stupid question, she sits down and pulls the first one towards her. At first she feels Will’s eyes on her, and that it makes it hard to start, but then he moves to the side, fumbles around boiling water and pulling down a mug, she sees him out of the corner of her eye. The kettle whistles, but he doesn’t offer her any, not out of rudeness, she thinks, he feels as though he’s gone somewhere else entirely, fingers clattering on the glass. But she certainly doesn’t have time to waste, so shuts him out and reads.
The letters, she decides fall into three categories. Mudane, scientific, and something else that she has no good word for...Quiet, maybe, a sharp, frozen, tone to them that stands her hairs on end, but draws her in despite herself. The first are descriptive, dull details of the goings on at the institution, the second, brilliant and technical, drafts, she considers, of all the papers he’s published throughout his incarceration. But it’s the last that hold what she’s seeking. As close to despairing, she considers, as Lecter is likely to get. Lonely, if she had to find one word...Not perhaps conventionally, but there’s a brittle kind of exhaustion that sweeps through the elegant script, a longing, and a selfish one. As close to despairing as he’s likely to get and maybe as close to human.
They won’t speak of you when I inquire, the words scroll across the page, so I am forced to surmise you are doing well by the lack of any news. Surely, if you had come to some harm, it would appear in this article or that one. Our good friend would not be able to resist imparting such information, I am quite certain. He is so very reliable, in some fashions.
I am happy to think you have not returned to looking after what occurred with Francis - I have never approved of that way of life for you, as you well know. You can, however, be stubborn to the extreme, over some matters. For instance, I thought perhaps after two hundred, you might visit, or on the anniversary of the trial, maybe on my birthday, or yours, but here we have passed three hundred, as well as all of those days, and still your absence resounds. I do not blame you for not wanting to return to these halls, they are rather dreadful, but I, you see, am quite incapable of going elsewhere. I do apologize for that. She senses movement behind her, but not fully, her brain occupied by the flow of the words, by the quiet, hidden, things, they express, she can’t tear her eyes from the page.
I do apologize for that. Perhaps when the next round number comes along, perhaps you are not counting at all. I should like to think you are.
Yours,
Hannibal
“Poetic, isn’t it?”
She jumps in her chair, her heart stopping and then racing, breath coming out in uneven spurts. He’s looking at the letter, dated not too long ago, and whatever was hidden in his eyes before is broken. Her heart thumps, because there’s only one way to do this, one path she sees laid clearly before her.
“He wants to see you.” The words are scarcely above a whisper, the agent in her feels the thrill of discovery. “Will - “ She’s close to losing her resolve. “Will, you could - “ He’s shaking his head. “Will, people are dying, he knows something, he - “
“No. No, Agent Starling, no.”
“I could tell him you’d see him if he talks.” She doesn’t listen to the protests though, only turns, looks at him, pushes on, because she’s not just a stupid girl from the country, she’s smart and she has intuition. And this, this is important. “If he doesn’t, you wouldn’t have to go. But I think,” she motions at the letters, “I think he would. Whatever game he’s playing, whatever he knows, it doesn’t matter to him. He just wants his amusement, doesn’t he?”
Above her, Will has gone very white.
“But that doesn’t matter in the face of this. There’s feeling here Will and nowhere, nowhere els -”
“Stop.” He grinds out, cuts her off. “You wanted to see him, I let you, this isn’t my responsibility anymore, he isn’t my -”
“Yeah.” She shoots back. “Yeah, I did and the only bit of him that isn’t immune to giving a damn, as far as I can tell anyway, is you. And I don’t have time to go digging up another miracle, I know you want to help those poor girls out. Besides - ” She pauses, breathes, and then says it, even though she’s fully prepared to regret it. “I think you want to see him too.”
Will’s face goes sallow at that, and rage bursts through it like the opening of a flood gate, red and then white, darker and darker. She’s closed the binders and gotten up as he stands there, ready to leave, ready to run, half muttering apologies, but then he speaks, stops her halfway out the door.
“You get him to promise.” His voice is thin and crumpling, and she feels the anger might not be at her all. “Give you the information up front, and I’ll think about it. But don’t you - “ He’s shaking and she thinks she ought to maybe help him, but he draws away when she takes a step back in. “Don’t you dare tell, Jack.”