Chapter Text
Will kept his eyes fixed on the fireplace as he turned the envelope over and over in one hand. It was meticulously addressed to Will Graham, care of FBI. Jack had brought it with him, because of course he had. He’d made a good show of reluctance about being the messenger, which Will had cut off as curtly as possible. He knew the letter was just as much a part of Jack’s offer as the photographs he had shown Molly.
Jack may have made the offer, but the force looming in Will’s mind at the thought of consulting wasn’t Jack-shaped. It circled at the corner of his mind’s eye, biding its time and drawing in closer. Or maybe he was circling it, like a vulture spiraling before instinct demanded he dive toward something rotten.
He imagined what it would feel like to turn Jack down. He could already see himself, stretched on his side of the bed with the light from his laptop screen as low as it would go, reading news stories about the Tooth Fairy’s next victims. He could already taste the sharpness of his frustration— he wouldn’t be able to see anything from the news stories, not even if he stooped so low as to look for Freddie’s brand of investigative reporting. The people who were supposed to be looking, who had the luxury of an unobstructed view, wouldn’t see anything. Families would continue to die.
He wouldn’t feel as guilty about that as Molly or Jack seemed to think.
No, when he was sleepless and weak after waking drenched in sweat, he wouldn’t feel guilty. He would feel alone. Alone in his gift of sight and his curse of hunger. He would snap his laptop shut, crumple his pillow under his head. He would consider reaching out to Molly where she slept beside him and he would find himself unable to touch her, feeling unclean. In the morning, he would keep trudging through his cookie-cutter life, trying to keep his monsters trapped behind their glass. He had put them there. Why did he keep wanting to let them out?
He could see it all so clearly because it was more of the same. How many more Tooth Fairy kills would it take before he found himself taking up Jack’s offer? Two, maybe three? How long before his feet led him down the inescapable halls of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane?
Will knew it wasn’t really the case that he felt drawn to. Profiling was messy and painful. And if he went back to it, it might confirm what he already suspected: after Randall Tier and the prisoner from Lecter Castle, after the soft slippery feeling of Cordell’s flesh in his mouth, profiling wouldn’t be the same. It might not be enough.
It wouldn’t be, as long as Baltimore was within reach.
But the email was different. Eve Polastri and M.I.6 didn’t offer the same dark temptations. Across an ocean, he could focus only on using his skills to catch a killer. Maybe he was wrong, maybe it would be different. After all, he’d never gotten to work without Hannibal Lecter’s influence. Maybe profiling could be good for him, without the schemes and manipulations and betrayals.
Maybe it would give him the fulfillment that his life with Molly and Walter couldn’t.
Will was an addict and he knew it. He might have to turn to an old pill to keep himself off the more lethal stuff.
Besides, it would be entertaining to give Jack Crawford such a blatant “fuck-you” by lending his empathy elsewhere. Molly wouldn’t have to think of her husband as someone who put himself above other people’s lives (and god, he realized, how he despised that old song and dance Jack had written and choreographed during their first few investigations).
Eve Polastri’s email sounded sympathetic and genuine. Will thought back to its closing paragraph. He had read it enough times that afternoon that he remembered it almost word-for-word.
I hope you’re enjoying retirement. I can only imagine what it must feel like to walk away from everything and get a new lease on life. I wouldn’t want to take that from you. But I also tried putting myself in your shoes and I wondered if it’s not a little dull after everything. I think I would miss it, if I tried to walk away.
If you miss it, Will, can you please let me know?
She had left him a wide door to graciously decline. Her message wasn’t just courteous, it was kind and empathetic. It gave him another reason to consider accepting: he didn’t want to leave that kindness unrewarded. It was such a normal, positive impulse that it half surprised him. And didn’t that count for something? When was the last time he’d felt drawn to help someone?
He looked down at the envelope, with its perfect, archaic script. He hadn’t opened it. He already knew its contents with a sour certainty. It wasn’t just Jack Crawford who wanted him consulting on the Tooth Fairy case.
For a second, he allowed himself to acknowledge how much he wanted to read whatever message it contained. Even knowing that it would leave him seething, it would feel good to have Hannibal’s words in his head again. Not the echoes that had haunted his thoughts for the first year after Muskrat Farm, but the real thing. Somewhere, sometime recently, clever fingers had moved a pen across paper with undue flourishes, capturing the turns of phrase and thoughts of a mind that had no equal. There would be barbs and affection in almost equal measure and for a short moment, Will would feel the echo of Hannibal’s hand cupping his cheek and a knife tearing out his insides.
He realized his thumb had already caught against the seal of the envelope. Will shook his head sharply, like trying to clear water or dream or fever from his head.
Eve Polastri didn’t have an ulterior motive. She wasn’t trying to manipulate him or guilt him by equating profiling with heroism. It felt like a nice fucking change of pace.
He tossed the envelope into the fire before he could question himself and vindictively enjoyed the way part of him despaired as it caught fire. For good measure, he chased it with the photographs Jack had brought. He didn’t watch the faces of the families start to blacken.
Eve’s ulterior motive was keeping her awake at night.
Contacting Will Graham might have been a mistake. Ever since she read the story of how Graham caught Hannibal Lecter, it had stuck in her mind. The news had a field day over Graham, who was still in the national memory in the US as the man accused and then acquitted of cannibalistic murders. The drama of Graham being the one to catch the actual killer was more than the media could resist. Photos from news articles showed a face that was stiff and haunted, eye blackened and a gauze bandage patched across his forehead. The hollow eyes last publicized in mug shots were now hailed as those of a victimized hero. But Eve, of course, had been most interested in the speculation that blossomed around the official story. How Graham had first levied accusations at Lecter while he was falsely imprisoned. How he had engaged Lecter for months after his release, reforming some facsimile of their earlier friendship. How he had followed Lecter to Europe without capturing him before they returned to the US together under mysterious circumstances. How a certain rumor had it that Graham hadn’t caught Hannibal Lecter at all, but that Lecter had turned himself in.
To Eve, it was a story laced with mutual obsession. And that she understood all too well.
Every day, she still combed news sites for any mention of a female stabbing victim turning up in any hospitals. She knew it wasn’t enough to make news—even if she went to a hospital, nothing about Villanelle’s story would prompt a story. Just another case of domestic violence, mugging, a pretty girl made into a victim.
It made Eve furious.
And then it made her nauseous.
Besides, it had almost been long enough that Villanelle wouldn’t need hospital care, one way or another. Eve’s best hope was to comb the homicides and look for Villanelle’s signature. She made time for those searches, too.
She had started coming to bed with her laptop tucked under her arm, where she stowed it on her bedside table. She had seen Niko raise an eyebrow after the second night, but he hadn’t asked. She was glad he hadn’t. She wished he would. They were back to the old forced normalcy that slowly corroded them both. She loved it, she hated it. These days, Eve didn’t seem to be able to draw distinctions between love and hate, fury and sorrow, safety and chaos.
Every night, she chased sleep for however long it took Niko to start snoring. She fought herself a few minutes longer before eventually the laptop came out and she was back to her search. Most of the time, her battery died long before she was able to sleep.
Her email to Will Graham was another loose end that she had to follow before the end of the night. She reread her own words until they were stamped in her brain— would he be able to sense her desperation? Would it make him more or less likely to refuse? Her justification for seeking Will’s help felt weak even to her, but Carolyn seemed to have bought it. She’d gotten paperwork started for his contract, should he accept. Carolyn was always open to unconventional means of finding her killers, Eve supposed.
Every time she checked her inbox and was denied a response, she scolded herself for even writing to him in the first place. Who was she to assume she and Will Graham had anything in common? Graham’s connections to Lecter were a thousand times darker and more twisted than whatever Eve fancied she shared with Villanelle. After all, hadn’t Graham sat back for three years while Lecter was imprisoned at a state hospital for the insane? And Graham had put him there. Eve found her lips twisting with a grim smile: wouldn’t that be something, if in her desperation to find Villanelle, Eve put yet another serial killer notch in Will Graham’s belt.
As it turned out, putting his life on pause to consult for M.I.6 was easier than Will would have liked to admit. Molly’s confusion over why he preferred consulting in England over going back to work for Jack Crawford was short-lived. She may not have liked the idea of Will heading to London for two weeks, but he felt her put it aside out of a gentle, unspoken concern for him. He didn’t work to assuage that concern, though he could have. Fortunately, Molly was good at not pressing him for explanations: their life the past three years wouldn’t have been sustainable otherwise.
When it came time to decline Jack’s offer, things went about as well as he had expected.
“I just don’t understand where this is coming from, Will. If I crossed some sort of line by visiting your family—“
“No, Jack. We both know what line was crossed and we both know who crossed it. I can’t come back. I’m sorry.” He forced the last part out stiffly, because he knew he couldn’t afford to burn any bridges. He tried to hold himself back; he knew Jack only deserved part of his anger.
“No, I’m sorry. And I’ll be sorrier still if I can’t find someone to identify the next family before the full moon.”
Okay, so maybe Jack deserved a little more anger than Will had been giving him credit for. “You’ll send the reference and the paperwork?” he asked flatly.
Jack took a moment to search for a final argument. He must have come up empty, because he agreed and wrapped up the call in his most clipped, professional tone.
It took a few rounds of email before Will got his security clearance for consulting with M.I.6, but his good name at the FBI made it slightly easier. The concept of background checks struck Will as funny. Yes, Will Graham was briefly institutionalized in a State Hospital for the Criminally Insane while facing multiple counts of premeditated murder, but those were eventually found to be the fault of his psychiatrist at the state hospital. Yes, then Will Graham and his superior were accused of conspiring to entrap Will’s other psychiatrist. But since this psychiatrist was the actual killer and tried to kill Will Graham and Jack Crawford before fleeing the country, we have to recommend that these areas of the record be carefully considered. All charges were eventually dropped, anyway.
Still, it was only a few days after making his decision that Will found himself enduring the sluggish, hateful jostle of people waiting in line to board a flight to London. Three years later and he somehow felt no more rooted to his daily life than all the times he’d crossed the country to profile for the FBI. Only barely more anchored than when he’d set sail for Florence. Had he, on some subconscious level, kept it that way?
M.I.6 put him up in a nice hotel room a few blocks from where he’d be working. It was 9:00 a.m. in London, 4:00 a.m. back home, and Will felt tired in a way that was wholly incompatible with sleep. He had a meeting at 11, so he killed time by taking a shower and getting in fresh clothes, unpacking his suitcase and setting up a workstation at the hotel desk. He brewed a cup of coffee with the room’s Keurig machine, wincing appreciatively at the bitter taste. He reread the first email from Eve— he’d only gotten a quick, grateful response from her before being forwarded on to HR— and wished he had some materials from the case to look over. He felt twitchy, even before the caffeine started to hit, and excited in a way he didn’t want to examine too closely. He let a half hour slide by as he drank his bad coffee and tried to keep his thoughts out of bad places.
My thoughts are often not tasty.
For the first time, Will wondered if this was a mistake.
He was ten minutes early for his meeting with Carolyn Martens, but her secretary led him into her office without hesitating.
Carolyn stood leaning against her desk, staring at the soggy sky out the window. The posture struck Will as unnatural, posed. Why would she be standing in her own office alone?
Focus. He found his hands fidgeting with his slacks and half of his brain marveled. How quickly jet lag, a cup of shitty coffee, and an unfamiliar authority figure could send him back to old habits. Eye contact.
“You must be Will,” Carolyn said with a smile, before the secretary could even make an introduction. The woman backed out of the room and shut the door. “It’s a pleasure.”
She extended a hand for him to shake. Her hand was smooth, her grip firm but polite. Will met her gaze for the duration of the handshake, taking in her sharp brown eyes with their unmarred whites.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Martens,” Will said.
“Please, call me Carolyn.” She gestured to the chair across from her desk. “How was your flight?”
“Fine.” He took a seat and realized decorum demanded more of an answer. “Uh, long. I’m not really sure what time it is anymore.” He tried not to cringe— how had he forgotten how much he hated this shit?
Her bland, courteous smile was still in place. “Yes, apologies for arranging this meeting so soon after your arrival. I was hoping to give you the rest of today to catch up with the cases. The team is meeting tomorrow morning for Eve Polastri’s briefing.” She slid a black file across her desk toward him. “I’ve prepared the pertinent details of the Trafalgar Team’s cases as well as everything we know so far for the Peel investigation.”
“Thanks.” Will grabbed the file and opened it, intending to flip through a few pages before setting it back down. Instead, he found himself stopped by the first crime scene photo he came across. A bearded man in his 50s, stretched on a bed with his head and one arm crooked unnaturally to the side, his glasses folded and set on his chest. It took Will a second of squinting before he realized the victim was wearing a black and white dress, stark against his bloodless skin. His legs were spread and Will could see blood spattered across the gap of inner thigh exposed where the dress had been hitched up.
Will made himself exhale slowly, evenly. This was a showy, spiteful, gleeful crime. The first corpse Will had looked at in three years. His first glimpse at a killer in three years.
“I’m still curious why Eve wanted you involved in this operation,” Carolyn said smoothly. Will snapped his attention back up to her. “Do you have any ideas?”
He blinked. “I assume she came across my record at the FBI.”
“Hmm, and what a record that is.” Carolyn’s lips quirked knowingly. “Impressive, of course, if a bit unorthodox in places. But you’d been three years retired from the FBI before Eve contacted you, correct? It leaves me to wonder why you’re getting back in the game.”
“I missed it. The thrill and the mystery and, well, saving lives.”
He couldn’t read Carolyn well enough yet to know if she saw through him. “And why come all the way to London? It seems your ties at the FBI still think highly of you.”
He let more of his nerves creep into his body language, fidgeting with the papers in the file and avoiding her gaze. “I guess I needed a change of pace. I wasn’t sure going back there after so long was such a good idea. Things got… complicated, as I’m sure you know.”
“Some would say you became unstable, during your time with the FBI.”
“I was sick.”
“Not when you killed Randall Tier.” She held up a hand, to stop a retort that Will hadn’t even started trying to formulate. “I understand that it was seen as necessary. I generally don’t oppose unsavory means if they get results. And I’m no stranger to investigators who become a bit… intertwined with the killers they’re looking for. Eve, I suspect, had her own reasons for wanting you to help with the Peel operation. I do as well.”
Will sized her up warily. He hadn’t expected to face this much confrontation with his past during this meeting. Still, he half-appreciated her bluntness.
“Will, I would like you to keep an eye on Eve Polastri for me. I think you’ll find you and she have a few things in common. I’m not certain she isn’t being made somewhat unstable herself by the search for her killer. I’d like you to make sure she doesn’t go too far. I’m hoping you’ll share my desire to avoid letting things go as far as they did with you and Hannibal Lecter.” She looked purposefully at the scar across Will’s forehead.
“You want me to profile Eve, while I profile a killer for her?”
Carolyn smiled. “I might not have said it so dramatically, but yes. Just a summary of your observations, every few days. In particular, anything you can determine about her attachments to the assassin, Villanelle.”
“Am I helping your interests, or hers?”“I’d prefer to think both. Have I asked too much of you?”
It wasn’t really a question and it marked the first time Will felt a bit of dislike color his perception of Carolyn. “It’s a strange request. If you’re worried about Eve, why is she still on the case?”
“I believe that question will be answered for you when you meet her tomorrow.” She seemed to gather from his expression that this wasn’t a sufficient answer, so she softened her brusque tone and added, “I’m not sure anything could keep Eve off Villanelle’s trail at this point.”
It was a slightly better answer than he’d been expecting, though he held tight to his wariness. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll let you know if I see anything.”
“Excellent.” She got to her feet briskly and Will followed her lead. “I won’t keep you any longer, I’m sure you’d like a chance to digest everything. I’ll see you tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp.”
Eve tugged down the hem of her pencil skirt, cursing herself for not picking a pair of slacks, and gave a self-conscious smile as she saw Carolyn step out of the building to greet her. She shifted her handbag in her grip as she crossed the distance between them. Get your shit together, Eve.
“All right?” Carolyn asked as Eve stopped in front of her.
“Yeah.” Eve fixed her jacket, avoiding Carolyn’s gaze. Of course Carolyn had seen through her. She was still seeing through her, giving Eve one of those inscrutable, considering looks. She looked content to accept Eve’s single-word response, but Eve knew she had to try harder. “Uh, how do you always look so good? I mean, do you even sleep?”
“It’s my moisturizer. It’s made of pig’s placenta. It costs a fortune and smells like arse, but it is exceedingly effective.”
Eve raised her eyebrows as she followed Carolyn back to the building’s entrance. “I don’t mind smelling like arse.”
“I’ll send you the link.” Carolyn strode down the hallway with Eve in her wake. “I thought it best for you and Will Graham to meet before introducing you both to the rest of the team.”
“What have you told the team my role is, exactly?”
“Outside expert.”
Eve frowned. “Expert on what?”“Female assassins.”
Eve paused before her response as they rounded a corner, uncertain how that nonchalant answer made her feel. “And Graham?”
“An expert from, shall we say, even further outside.” She pushed through a door, leaving Eve hastily following, barely catching the door as it tried to close on her.
The meeting room had a single long table with a sole occupant sitting several seats away from the door. He got to his feet as Eve and Carolyn entered. Carolyn swept past him, toward the seat on the other side of the table that she’d clearly been occupying before going to collect Eve.
“Will Graham,” Eve said, extending her hand to him before he had a chance to say anything. “I’m Eve Polastri. It’s so great to meet you, thanks for coming out here.”
He shook her hand and gave her a short smile that didn’t seem to reach behind his glasses. “Hi, Eve. It’s nice to put a face to the name.”
Will’s eyes only met hers in glances, moving across the rest of her face, hair, clothing. She wondered how much he was inferring about her from her appearance. She did her best to sum him up as well. He was more unassuming than she’d expected: smaller stature, his wavy hair almost boyish, with pronounced lines under his eyes and a furrow between his brows. He was guarded and inscrutable, but not nervous. Eve caught herself staring at the crooked scar across his forehead and forced her gaze back to his eyes, guiltily.
“Did you get a chance to look over the cases?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ve seen anything you don’t already know, though.”
Eve tried to shelf her impatience. There would be time later to see Graham’s skills in action, she told herself. But she’d never been very good at keeping her mouth shut. “Not even a hunch?”
He shrugged. “I think you might be looking for two killers.”
“What? Really?” Eve was startled to hear her own suspicions voiced aloud.
“Most likely.”
He might have said more, but Carolyn had gathered her papers and was looking pointedly at them. Eve would have ignored her, but Will deferred to give her his attention.
“Perhaps we should meet the rest of the team? I’m sure the two of you will have plenty to discuss after Eve’s briefing.”
Eve Polastri was a mess. Will watched as she fumbled her way through her briefing: fighting with the projector, snapping at the Oxford kid when he offered to help. It was at least half-endearing--Will remembered his first few days teaching at Quantico had had their fair share of awkwardness.
The shift in her demeanor was all the more prominent, then, when she started talking about Oksana Astankova.
“She’s flamboyant and attention-seeking and instinctive. Spoilt. Easily bored. But, no. She’s not sloppy.” Something crossed Eve’s face as she spoke, some extra meaning and sentiment woven into the words.
Eve, I suspect, had her own reasons for wanting you to help with the Peel operation.
Will tried to quell the bad feeling building in his chest through the rest of the briefing.
During the discussion afterward, Will got a chance to assess the members of Project Manderley. Jess had a wearied good humor to her that Will decided he liked. The gangly boy from Oxford, Hugo, seemed obnoxious but unthreatening. Kenny was soft and mild, and kept glancing at Eve with something like alarm on his face.
Eve fielded questions and bounced-ideas with a slight impatience. She didn’t press Will for the theory he had mentioned, but he could feel her gaze heavy on him whenever one of the others was speaking. Will kept quiet, mostly, mindful of the impression he wanted to create with the team. He felt more exhausted than he had from jet lag.
When Jess and Hugo had run themselves out of questions, Will was relieved to have the briefing broken up. He made his way to the break room and the water cooler, mulling the cases over in his head.
He wondered, briefly, if the mistake he had made in coming out to London wasn’t dangerous but merely mundane. Something about these crimes seemed almost beneath Will’s notice. Sure, Villanelle’s assassinations tended slightly toward the gruesome, most notably her emasculation of Frank Haleton. But there were no striking tableaux here: no sculptures of corpses, no showy displays. He thought of Randall Tier and tried not to feel disdainful toward M.I.6’s killers even as a familiar voice in his head whispered: No artisanship among assassins.
The door opened behind him and Will glanced back to find Hugo entering. Will braced himself for some form of unwelcome conversation.
Hugo sauntered up to the water cooler but didn’t even bother with the pretense of grabbing a cup.
“So, Will Graham, huh?” He wore a calculating smile. “Is it true you catch killers by getting inside their heads?”
“I just look at the evidence,” Will said. “See things differently than most people.”
“I heard you relive their crimes, figure out what they’re thinking. Apparently so well that people thought you were a killer yourself.”
Will thought of Freddie Lounds, of a handful of red hair ripping from her scalp. His jaw twitched. “The guy that didn’t kill all those people.”
“The guy that caught Hannibal the cannibal,” Hugo corrected smugly. “Did you really share meals with him? I’ve always wondered: what do people taste like?”Will fixed his eyes to Hugo’s and said, “Whatever he wanted them to.”
Hugo mimed a shiver, grinning. “That’s great stuff, Graham. You must be fun at parties. I’m glad Polastri dug you up for this case, I can’t wait to pick your brain.”
“You might not like what you find. The last person to get too far inside my head was declared legally insane.”
Hugo’s eyes traced the line across Will’s forehead, his expression like a kid who had found a dismembered animal carcass in the woods.
“Hey, Cambridge!” Eve’s voice came from the doorway and Hugo jumped. “Jess needs your help with research.”
“Right, yeah.” Hugo threw Will a smug smile. “Let’s talk later, Graham.”
Will ignored him, grasping at his patience as Eve approached.
“I kind of think he’s an idiot,” she said. “I’m not sure where Carolyn found him.” She pulled a face. “She probably knows his father.”
Will raised his eyebrows and didn’t look at her.
“How’s this compare to the FBI?” Eve asked.
“Different, for now. I tend to work best alone. And if I can see a crime scene in person.”
“Well, you saw enough to come to the same conclusion I did. Come here.” She led him to one of the tables and Will was unsurprised to see her pull a file out from under her arm and spread the Peel photos over its surface. “What does this look like to you? This particular murder? A heart attack caused by air injected under the toenail.”
Will could sense her building to something. “Discreet. Professional. Passionless.”
“Right, right. It’s subtle... boring. Villanelle is an attention-seeker. Most psychopaths are. She likes playing to the gallery. She wants it to be fun. She wants people to know when she’s killed someone. She wants me to know.”
Will felt his stomach jolt. “You?”
She glanced at him, her expression as if she’d only just heard what she had said. “Whoever. People.”
Will let her go back to the report, studying her in glances. “It wasn’t her.”
“It wasn’t her,” Eve echoed, chewing her lip.
“You wanted it to be.”
She looked up at him, surprised. “What? No. I mean, it’s not her style. I’d be almost disappointed if it was her, except… well, I dunno.”
It was time to voice the fear that had been building since the briefing. “You know her.”
“I’ve profiled her,” Eve said. She was trying hard to be dismissive, back at the files, but Will could see through to the excitement brewing beneath.
“More than that.”
“I was there when she shot Konstantin. When she stabbed Bill. When she was hunting Frank.”
He shook his head. “You know her personally. Intimately.”
She looked up at him, lips parted, frozen for a moment. “Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
Will sighed, looking away from her. “Why am I really here, Eve?”
She took a breath. “She’s gone. And I want you to help me find her.”