Chapter Text
He’s relieved to have his glasses back. They wouldn’t give them to him until now; probably afraid that he’d break the lenses and slit his wrists with the shards. It wouldn’t have mattered. Will found about six different ways to kill himself in that cell on the first day, but he wasn’t going to do it. Being in prison, he’d found, was a little like dying anyway. Like being a ghost. Everyone talked about you in the past tense, and you had a lot of unfinished business.
But haunting isn’t necessarily the right way to go about dealing with these things.
He’d come to his senses after his little scheme had failed, the orderly dead and Hannibal coming to see him with his cuffs pulled low over bandages. At that point, there had been no hope; it had been a parting shot, the trigger pulled without fear of consequences. But it hadn’t worked, and anyway, Will had spent long enough alone at this point that he was very nearly detoxed from the field. Withdrawals, of course—nightmares that left him shuddering and sobbing. But there was one very important realization that Will had come to, bereft of anyone to empathize with. There was a reason he hunted killers instead of joining their ranks. You can’t empathize with people without caring about them. And for every killer, there is at least one victim, who deserves that same amount of care.
He had spent months sharing his head with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He had also forgotten Mrs. Hobbs’ first name.
So after Hannibal cheated death and came to give Will that disappointed look—heinous, hypocritical bastard—Will had requested the files of the cases he’d worked on, and forced himself to learn everything about every one of the victims. He’d stood in their killers’ places before; now he stood as the victims, getting shot and slit and stabbed and bleeding out over and over again. It hurt, like a baptism in acid, but he came up clean. He knew who he was. He wasn’t Garrett Jacob Hobbs; he wasn’t Hannibal. He was Will Graham; he was something of a victim; he had come very close to becoming a monster.
But he wasn’t a monster yet; he was a monster hunter, and he had to reveal the monster before he put the silver bullet through its heart.
He takes back his glasses and his clothes—someone’s cleaned them, but there’s still a hole in the shoulder of his shirt where Jack shot him. He manages a bit of a smile, and runs his finger around the frayed edge. He liked this shirt; maybe he’ll patch it, and wear it like an accusation to the office. But not right away—no, that will come later. Flannel and comfort, the oversized garments he’s always used as a shield will have to be packed away for the time being. Will is a fisherman, but fish like flashy bait.
He wears the clothes back out, but the mask he wears is not his own. And there’s a relief to know that, for certain.
Chilton stands by the door as he leaves, watching him. His look says something about expecting him back, whether or not he’s been exonerated of his crimes. “Don’t forget our arrangement,” is all he says, that perpetual sneer in his tone. “You’ve still got some tests to sit for, patient of mine or not.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Will assures him with equal sarcasm. That’s part of the plan; play up the charming, smirking, butter-won’t-melt psychopath that Chilton expects. It’ll get back to Hannibal; he may or may not believe Will’s change, but with any luck trying to figure it out will distract him. He’s already cozied up to Gideon; he begged the guards to tell him about the nurse Gideon mutilated before he did it. It’s taken the collapse of his life for Will to understand himself and his mind, but their descriptions—brave, funny, wry, left behind a steady girlfriend and a dog—give him what he needs to feel Gideon dig his eyeballs out of their sockets and impale him thirty times over. Any time he feels himself start to slide, he repeats their names. Elizabeth Shell. Louise Hobbs. Miriam Lass.
He can do this. He’ll wear the mask of a killer, and behind it, hold the people he couldn’t protect close. And if all goes well, Will will bait the Chesapeake Ripper out, and make sure that he himself is his last victim.
***
Resolute or not, Will’s skin crawls at the prospect of wearing not just the mask of a killer, but a mask in the image of Hannibal. It’s not enough to pretend to snap on his own; he has to get Hannibal interested, to make Hannibal see him as a protege, and there’s some old cliche about imitation and flattery that he can’t quite remember as he pokes uncomfortably around the tailor’s showroom. Sure, he spent most of their relationship getting gaslit and having his brain ravaged by false diagnoses and very real illness, but Will would probably have to be missing his brain entirely to not have seen signs. It would have felt like a compliment, and perhaps he might even have thought about unprofessional doctor-patient relations if he didn’t draw the line for potential romantic partners at murder. You don’t much want someone’s tongue down your throat when it’s been preceded by the ear of someone they murdered.
He swallows back bile, and tries to focus on the mundanity of shopping. Not all of life is grandstanding about mortality and God and bullshit; he’ll have to remember that when he goes back to face Hannibal. Walking the dogs, fishing, cooking comfortably pescatarian meals. Little comforts. He rubs the fabric of a three-piece between his fingers, wondering if it’s not enough like him. He doesn’t want to oversell it.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Yeah, I, uh—you got anything for sort of a, uh—I have this, this person, who I want to, sort of show I’m doing, uh, well…”
“Post-breakup glow-up?”
Will narrows his eyes, applying the best of his behavioral unit investigative training to trying to parse that sentence. “Yes,” he finally settles on. “Sort of, um, this—” he gestures to his trusty carhartt jacket and jeans— “but elegant.”
There is a long pause. “We like a challenge,” the clerk says at last. Her voice is strained.
***
Somehow, they manage it—the suit’s a warm grey, something he might actually wear if it weren’t cut so tight. He takes it home and dresses up in front of his bedroom mirror, scratching Winston’s ears for moral support. It feels bad to bring it willingly into his home, given the associations it’s soon to pick up. His house used to be a safe place. Which makes him think of Hannibal himself being here, planting evidence, carefully setting him up to take the fall, and Winston whines, because he’s digging his nails into his palm with fear and loathing and anger. He shakes himself, looks in the mirror again, bares his teeth in that smile his lawyer told him to practice before he went on the stand. It always came out a bit too scary in the mirror over the sink in his cell; now, the feral set of his jaw seems to work just right. The vest smooths the jut of his ribs (grown a touch too prominent after the neurosis about eating anyone else’s cooking set in). The jacket nips in at his waist and accentuates his shoulders; the pants do remarkable things for his ass. He takes off his glasses and rakes his hair back from his forehead. Yeah. This is bait that anyone would be a fool not to take.