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The first thing Beverly thought was, Wait, did I really go to hell?
But then she recognized Baltimore State Hospital for the criminally insane, and the corridor that led to him.
She wasn’t cold, and the tear that fell without her even being aware was of overwhelming relief.
There was a cough. She turned her head to the inmate glaring at the wall of his cell. Dr. Gideon.
Her stomach seized as she was suddenly struck by how wrong it was that Will was thrown together with that man, and Hannibal Lecter became the first person Beverly ever truly despised.
“HEY!” Beverly yelled at Gideon.
He yawned and scratched his face. She looked back at the guard. A bored statue.
So she walked forward, and stopped in her tracks at the sight of Will Graham holding the bars and staring straight at her, like he was looking for her.
His breath quickened, and she wondered if he even knew who she was. There was suddenly a knot the size of a house in her throat.
“Will." She walked closer. "I’m…I’m so sor—“
“Don’t. Please.” Will took a shuddering breath, and on the exhale looked like he would cry. “If this is all in my head, and you say that, then—then I don’t know what that says about me.”
She stared at him, combative. Well, he knew who she was, then. “I’m not in your—look, I have to. I should have—”
“Believed me? You must know, out of everyone, I don’t blame you. There was no evidence, and despite that, at my request—”
“I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. Don’t set rules that you won’t follow, Will.”
He looked at her hard, and she knew he was rebelling. “You’re not doing what I want you to do. Maybe you are real.”
Beverly pursed her lips, and pushed the cell door open, walking in. “The real ghostly deal. Then, what?” She put her hands on her hips. “We won’t let each other say what we want to say, so what are we allowed to say?”
He let out a humorless chuckle, looking at the corner of his cell. “Can’t you just…ask me to have a beer with you?”
She blinked, dropping her hands. His face was sardonic but his voice broke toward the end. Smirking, she said, “Are you saying you would accept it now?”
“Maybe.”
Beverly shook her head at him. “Sheesh, your timing, Will.” She sighed. “How are we gonna go now? You’re in jail, man!”
His lips turned up, but instead of laughing again, Will kept his eyes on the cell wall, his trembling chin wrestling down a sob. “I know.” He rubbed his whole face, then looked at her again. He really was in tatters, like she had only seen him once before. “I only wish I had said yes, Beverly.”
She smiled sadly. “At least once.”
“At least most of the time.”
Beverly chuckled. “You would’ve hated every minute.”
Will smiled, a real, shy thing, and it melted her like it always did. “I never gave it a chance. I like talking to you.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “I always thought you endured it.”
“Oh…I’m sorry I made you feel that way. When I first knew you—“ he stopped himself.
Beverly’s grin crawled over her face. “I annoyed the crap out of you, huh? Oh yes, I did.”
He looked pointedly to the side, laughing with his mouth closed. His shoulders shook. His honesty was endearing and didn’t sting. She couldn’t help giggling along.
“And yet,” he said, “you went from that, to being the one person who made me…” Will looked at her, almost in wonder, “…at ease.”
She hitched up an eyebrow, biting back a snort. “Uh-huh, at ease. Like a Yankee candle?”
“Like a friend.”
She clicked her mouth shut. “…Shame. I was about to invent Katz-therapy.”
He puffed out a laugh, then touched his chest delicately, saying, “Oh, no thank you, no more therapy for me.”
She did snort then, and covered her mouth. “Aw hell, sorry, Will.” Her voice shook a little, humor and trauma a familiar cocktail for her, her repressed chuckle mirrored in him.
“No, but really,” he continued after taking a breath, “that’s not what I meant at all. You’re not therapeutic, Beverly, nor ‘soothing’.”
“Geez, don’t wax too poetic about me.”
His smile dropped, and he blinked. “I—I don’t mean. You’re just a—very real—human.”
“Like I said, control yourself—”
He tutted, hand fidgeting. “I’m not…”
Beverly gently kicked his shin (did he feel that?). “No need to do this, William,” she grinned. “Right back at’cha.”
At that, Will stilled, then took a step closer, his eyes flicking around her face. “I think…that. That is why I like you.”
“Why? Say it. Don’t say it. I’m low maintenance, is that it?” She’s heard it before. Quite a few times.
“That’s insulting. To me, I mean, I’m not that lazy.”
Her fake smile dissolved. “Oh. I know. Then why?”
Will looked at her. “Every single one of my friends, and Dr. Lecter, they all want to pick my brain. Like the way I think makes me so different.”
“Doesn’t it?”
He scoffed. “I’m as different from everyone as anyone. But you— I think you couldn’t care less to understand me, clinically, but you get me, Beverly. See, these psychoanalysts I keep company with, they’re uh—professionally curious. You are just…curious.”
“Unprofessionally so.”
“Yes,” he agrees softly, and she notices how he can look into her eyes these days. “You’re real, and you don’t think I’m too weird to be real. You don’t give a crap if I’m useless to you.”
She became serious at that. “I guess that must be…refreshing. I respect Jack so much that I’m dead and I can’t even say what I’m about to say without saying that I respect him first, but he kinda treated you like a PEZ dispenser for…criminal profiles.”
Will coughed out a laugh at the image.
“Eh, I let him. At least I was useful…And it wasn’t just Jack.” His mouth twisted. “But yes, it wore me down.”
“And I didn’t wear you down?”
He turned an analytical eye on her. “I had expected you to wear me down, from the moment I met you. You were always just about to,” they both laughed, “But no, never. Rather, I feel like…a person, when I’m with you.”
“Yeah?” She asked, and he nodded. “That’s good.”
“I feel like you ask me questions less because of the answer and more because—I have my life, you have yours, and when we talk, because we simply want to, we have…claim over a part of each other’s.” He looked at her like he was asking her if he was right.
She tilted her head. “I own a small part of you.”
Will nodded slowly. “And I, you.” He looked down at his hands, the thumb on the right one pressing on the cushiony part of the left. “I am honored.”
Geez, he was gonna make this dead girl blush. “That’s nuts. You’re wonderful, Will.”
He blinked, laughed but in a confused way, and shook his head.
“You are,” she declared.
“Starting to think you’re in my head again.”
“You think I can fit in there, how flattering.”
“Oh please, don’t force me into a compliment.”
She chuckled, but he seemed to still have something on his mind, so she let the quiet stretch. He sighed and went back to twisting his hands. “The part of you that belongs to me…I’m not sure I was a good steward, Beverly, I-I know I wasn’t. But I wish I had been, and I wish I had asked for more. I wish I had entrusted you with more.”
She fixated on his hands too. “If we had more of each other, wouldn’t we just feel even worse now?”
“…So?”
Beverly’s throat seized, and she wanted to hug him. She blinked rapidly and glanced away instead. “I guess it’s pointless to think about. But for the record—same.”
He started nodding, but she continued, “And for the other record, you are the perfect steward, Will. I know, out of everyone, you won’t forget me.”
“Not forgetting is one thing. I’ll remember you.”
“…Yeah. Of course. Thanks, Will.“
“I can’t shake off the feeling that I would have been sane—or sane-r, had I relied more on people like you. Then maybe Jack would have—” His eyebrows stitched together and he looked like misery for a moment.
“Will?”
He looked at her, his eyes were red.
“I said I don’t want your apology either.”
“I’m not apologizing. It wouldn’t make this better.”
“Neither will feeling guilty.” She huffed, shifting her weight. “We can’t know what would have happened.”
Will was quiet, then walked backwards two steps until his legs bumped his cot and he sat. He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes and sighed when he felt her sit next to him, sighed all the air in his lungs away while rolling his head toward her. His eyes remained closed, grief-stricken and—at ease. He said quietly, “You know what would make this better?”
“What?”
“A beer.”
“Hell, yes. Where is our waiter?”
Will’s wheezy laughter clashed with Beverly’s surprisingly girlish cackles, pouring into the cell a new sound for their world, a sound owned by two. His forehead fell softly on her shoulder, and they breathed.