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He's never given it much thought. But now that he has a mountain of files and paper work to get through, Will is beginning to wonder how he's been able to handle not having his own desk or office within the FBI headquarters. But the Bureau is already over-packed with people, so a request made to Jack Crawford only resulted in Will being told to use one of the empty interrogation rooms.
And it certainly seemed like a sensible idea at the time but now that he's been in the same gray colored room for hours, he's beginning to hate everything about it. Still, he soldiers on because it's Friday and there's still a chance of getting home before midnight.
Time painfully stretches out, but two hours and one cup of coffee later and he's done. Will stands up to stretch his legs and gather the files. He can almost feel that something bad is going to happen when the door opens behind him. He freezes in his spot when Alana walks in, and he almost fails to notice that she's carrying a few documents in her arms.
"Jack wanted me to give you these to look over" she says tentatively, as if he's a scared dog and she doesn't want to startle him.
He gives the file a look of disdain. "Did he also tell you what I did to piss him off so much?"
The hint of a smile passes her lips, but is quickly muffled by her mask of professionalism. "Sorry, but I guess the BAU is just understaffed right now."
"Or maybe the Bureau should really think about balancing the budget better."
Alana opens her mouth to comment, but she's suddenly cut off the moment the lights go out.
"Don't worry, we have a backup generator" Will says.
The light comes back on with an unsettling buzzing soon after. And he wants to breathe in relief, but the room falls in darkness seconds later. Both of them stay frozen for a moment, waiting for any change. But none comes.
"I guess you were right about the budget" Alana says.
There's frantic running and talking outside of the interrogation room, and Will walks over to open the door to see what's happened exactly. But the door refuses to budge. He tries again and again until he remembers something.
"What's wrong?" Alana asks.
"The lock is electronic."
And the penny drops for her as well. "Of course. You wouldn't want suspects just fleeing from the interrogation room."
A voice outside yells that the generator failed and that everyone should stay calm until they can resolve the issue. And Will tries to suppress a sigh because this means they're both stuck here.
There's still a hint of evening light streaming through the window in the room, just enough for Will to make out where everything is. But the obscurity remains unnerving and it reminds him of all the nightmares he has almost every night. And a part of his brain begins to tease him that maybe he's stuck in one right now.
"Well I guess the Bureau is making us pull an all-nighter on a Friday no matter what" Alana says, moving over to the table and taking a seat.
"Looks like it."
Will follows suit and takes a seat across from her. But the moment he does, a voice sounds off in his head, telling him that it's all wrong. For so long he's associated darkness with nightmares, something he doesn't even want to acknowledge, and now he's sharing this obscurity with someone he's come to care about.
He hates how intimate it feels to have someone else be on the precipice of this world of his, even if Alana might not be aware of it. The reality of it is making him anxious, but this time there's nowhere to run.
"I guess it's going on in the whole city" a voice uncomfortably close says, and Will almost jumps out of his seat. He hasn't even noticed that Alana has moved over to the small window beside him. "It's really something. Our whole view right now is just darkness. It's a little unnerving, isn't it?" she goes on.
Will smiles weakly. "It looks like that every night in Wolf Trap."
She turns around slightly and pauses, as if trying to remember if she's ever been at his house at night time. Or maybe she's wondering what it would be like. And just like that Will is assaulted with an image of her sinking in the same darkness that his mind is swimming in right now. He shuts his eyes and shakes his head slowly in a vain attempt to ward off whatever is lurking at the edges of his mind.
He doesn't want to see any shadows crawling on the walls, but now that his eyes are closed, it forces him to turn inwardly and face the things crawling around his head. It's almost like he's back home, but instead of clutching his pillow he's trying to hold onto a creaky table that sends scraping sounds echoing in his ears.
He's not sure how long this lasts but after a while he can almost hear a voice cutting through the amplified white noise in his head. Will reluctantly opens his eyes and now that he's adjusted to the darkness he can see Alana has moved her chair closer to him.
"Will, what’s wrong?" she asks gently.
He's immensely tempted to just open up and spill exactly how hard it is for him to fall asleep every night and how the line between nightmare and reality is starting to blur. And even if he doesn't want her to worry or start playing shrink, what scares him the most is seeing the change in Alana's eyes after she finds out how messed up he is.
So he just nods and says, "I guess I'm just a little tired."
"Has Jack been keeping you here all day?"
"No more than usual. I'm fine, really."
"Will, you're shaking."
It takes him a moment to realize that she's right. "It's just the cold. The blackout must have shut off all the radiators."
"There aren't even any radiators in here."
He doesn't know what to say now that she's caught onto him, so he stays quiet.
"I know it's just not fatigue" Alana says, "and you don't have to tell me what's going on if you don't want to. But I'll always be here to listen if you change your mind."
"I really am fine" he says, hanging onto the words like a mantra, hoping that if he manages to convince Alana then maybe he'll convince himself.
"My oldest brother used to have pretty bad panic attacks" she says, and when Will opens his mouth to say that he isn't panicking, she cuts him off. "And I'm not saying that what's happening to you, but I think it's around the same area."
"What did he do?" he asks, curiosity getting the better of him.
"Breathing exercises were no good. And before any pills could kick in, the panic attack could already be over. So we ended up reading a lot about how to instill relaxation."
Will lets out a short involuntary laugh.
"That's funny?" she asks, confused.
"No, I'm sorry. It's that it all sounds a bit like feel-good nonsense from self help books."
Alana raises an eyebrow at him. She then draws her seat closer until their knees touch, and Will watches with confusion as she reaches over and places her fingertips on both sides of his head.
"Alana?" he asks apprehensive.
"I'm just proving that the feel-good-nonsense technique can be beneficial."
"I don't think--"
"Sorry, but for this to work you need to put your thinking on hold."
He wants to laugh again because he can't fathom ever turning off his brain, least of all now that his head is literally in her hands. And Will quickly becomes hyperaware of her fingers doing some sort of massage on his temple, so he struggles to remind himself that she's just doing this to prove a point and nothing more. And yet there's that pesky part of his brain that throws all kinds of doubts into the mix.
Alana's fingers move around gingerly as if she's afraid of something, and for the first time since the blackout started, Will is glad to have the ubiquitous darkness because it acts like a hazy barrier between them. It's almost like the way he uses his glasses to put a shield between him and the world, but in this case it's all around.
And this enables him to let his guard down for a moment, and his hands stop shaking.
---
Minutes slip by and Will soon realizes that being stuck in the same room for a long time has made the awkwardness slowly dissipate and the occasional silences between them have become comfortable. The only problem arises when monotony settles in.
The end of two hours finds them both sitting on the floor, side by side, facing the wall with the two-way mirror.
"Seriously, try it" Alana says.
He peers through the darkness at the object in her hand. "I'd rather not. I'll probably end up hitting and shattering the mirror by mistake."
"They FBI cleared you for shooting, Will. I think you're safe to bounce a harmless stress ball."
"I'm not stressed."
"We've been stuck here for two hours. Even I'm stressed and I'm supposed to know how to manage it."
He gives in eventually and takes the ball from her hand. It feels light and harmless and fun, so he gives a weak throw against the top of the wall in front of him, right above the two-way mirror. It bounces off without an issue and lands back in his hand.
"See, I told you. You worry too much" she says, lightly bumping his shoulder with her own.
He keeps throwing the ball in roughly the same spot, quickly becoming absorbed by the repetitive action. And soon enough he realizes she's right. He'd been tense, and a stupid little plastic ball with a smiley face on it is helping him, even if all it does is serve as a distraction.
Minutes pass by in a haze until Will begins to wonder why Alana has fallen completely quiet.
"Are you all right?" he asks, feeling how his own monsters are trying to sneak through the barrier of distraction he has been building.
"I'm fine" she says. "I'm just wondering why it's taking so long for them to fix the generator."
"With our budget, it was probably a terrible generator to begin with."
"Maybe. Or maybe someone sabotaged it and is using the blackout as an opportunity to sneak into the BAU."
The idea takes him by complete surprise and causes Will's throw to veer off-course. The stress ball manages to ricochet off the top of the wall and onto the ceiling light, breaking in the process. But before any shattered glass can even fall, the ball bounces one more time and flies right into his face.
Will's head is sent back and he hits it on the wall behind him. When he opens his eyes, he can see that his entire field of vision has been filled by Alana. But something's not right. The right side of her face seems cracked down the middle, and for a second Will begins to panic. But reason gets hold of him, and he straightens himself. He removes his glasses, noticing that the right lens has a nasty split.
"Are you okay?" Alana asks. From the proximity he can clearly see that she's half worried and half stifling a laugh.
Will looks her with an unsure expression. "I guess this means I'm a little bit too stressed."
His comment is enough of a permission for her to laugh, and he can't help but smile when Alana's voice fills the room.
"I'm really sorry about you glasses" she says soon after.
"It's fine, I have an extra pair at home." He rubs the back of his head where he hit the wall, but pauses suddenly.
"What's wrong?"
"I remembered that without my glasses I won't be able to drive back home."
"You don't have to worry about that, I'll drive you."
"You don't have to do that."
"I pretty much broke your glasses. I think the least I can do is get you home."
Will's eyes fall onto the door. "Provided we ever get out of this room."
She shakes her head at his pessimism and then settles back down next to him. "If I was a kid again I'd be tempted to try and get out through there." She gestures towards the other side of the room.
"I don't think it's possible. It's too high. And small."
"I once tried to sneak out a similar window when I was in second grade."
Will can't help but smile. "You're kidding."
"No, I really didn't want to take a Math test."
"Well I can't imagine it going too well."
"I did, actually. Until my shoe got caught on the window sill and I fell head first onto the sidewalk. There was blood everywhere and the teacher had to call my parents. The other kids laughed at me for about a month, but at least my trip to the hospital got me out of the test."
"I never would have thought you were one of those kids who skipped class."
Alana tries to emulate an air of pensiveness. "Behind every successful therapist is a reckless teenager."
"Well I find it hard to image you ever being reckless."
"Four brothers, remember? You can't grow up with so many guys around and not end up tangled within their little schemes."
"You don't talk about your brothers all that much lately" Will points out before he can help it.
"Well, everyone's gone in different states. Or countries. And it takes a lot of coordination to get everyone together, even for a holiday dinner. I suppose that at the end of the day it's just better for us all if we drift apart a little bit."
"It probably takes some getting used to, doesn't it?"
Alana takes a breath and thinks for a moment. "The odd part is that it doesn't. I really love my family, but after sixteen years of being cramped with six other people, it's nice to have a place just for me. Besides, I've always thought about living in a two story house all to myself."
"I've always thought about moving near the beach" Will hears himself say out loud.
She goes silent for a moment, as if trying to picture it. "That sounds really peaceful. How come you've never done it?"
"The dogs, mostly. The last time I took them to beach, two of them drank a lot of seawater and fell sick."
"I'm sure they you can teach them to stop doing that with a bit of training."
He nods, knowing it's true because he's already considered this a long time ago. Because the truth of the matter is that he doesn't want to move when her house is only an hour and half away from his. And there's still a thread of hope that sometime in the future he'll be able to move to his dream home along with her.
The talking soon moves from dream houses to food, and Alana confesses that she loves unpretentious food, something she knows would break Hannibal's heart if he found out. So she always tries to seem as if she knows what he's talking about whenever he invites her over for dinner. Alana also finds it easy to guess that Will's dining choices often revolve around nothing but coffee.
After a while, Will notices that he's stopped obsessively checking his watch, so he has no idea how much time has passed. But he finds that he doesn't really care. Because once they exhaust almost all the topics they can think of, the room falls quiet, and Alana soon ends up putting most of her weight on Will's shoulder. It's too dark to see much of anything, but he can tell by her breathing that Alana's almost fallen asleep. Will tries not to wake her, only moving slightly so he can reach the jacket he has long since abandoned. And he drapes it over her like a blanket.
He tries to stay resolute and not give into the exhaustion that's been weighing on his shoulders all day, because that would mean that the nightmares are just around the corner, hiding and waiting in anticipation. And yet, no matter how hard he tries, Will's eyelids threaten to close.
And once they do, he sees an image conjuring in front of his eyes, but it's terribly hard to see because it's out of focus and twitchy like an old faded piece of film. But Will realizes that he's on a porch overlooking the beach. A moment later seven dogs appear, chasing one another and barking with excitement, leaving paw prints in the sand. And from the corner of his eye he sees something else, but he can't quite focus. Eventually he catches sight of a wave of brown hair, and maybe a red dress. But they disappear in the blink of an eye the moment a tall man in a suit walks over.
Will wakes up, not with a start, but with deep doubt and confusion swimming in his head. He takes a few moments to separate the line between reality and dream, even if a part of him doesn't really want to. He looks over to his left and tries to peer through so he can put his mind at ease. The darkness makes it hard to see anything, but he can clearly hear someone else sleeping beside him, still leaning on his shoulder. And Will breathes in relief.
Sometime later he falls back asleep, but it's a dreamless one. And he doesn't wake until there's a distinct sound of a door opening somewhere nearby.