empathicfault | IC Inbox

“I’m not strictly against bad things happening to bad people,” Malcolm tells him carefully, but there’s no revulsion or even distaste in his eyes. “There was a bad man in my world. He was going to hurt my family. He had Gil stabbed. He was a monster and he was pulling political strings at the highest levels. One night, my sister just… lost it and stabbed him to death right in front of me. You know what I did? I covered it up. I dismembered his corpse and then I actually used the guy’s own clandestine courier network to have the pieces dropped in a lake in Estonia. And… I’m not saying that I didn’t have an existential crisis or three over it, but I also came here about an hour after stabbing my father. Shaw thinks I don’t understand why you’re an inmate because I think we’re so similar, but she’s so wrong about that. I don’t always understand why I’m a Warden. But I also feel like explaining that to her would be… counterproductive. And if we’re going to make a home anywhere, we have to get you graduated. But I don’t want… I don’t want to not have you in the meantime. That’s all I was concerned about that day. And… if Hannibal does really show up here… I just. Want to still matter to you.”

Will's heard the first bit of this, but it's helpful to hear it retold, re-committed, after everything he's just gone into. Will can't help but smirk at hearing that the guy's own network was used to hide the body parts. A little bit of the Will Graham who burned evidence and joyously ate ortolan peeks through again.

The middle part, the part about Malcolm somehow 'mysteriously' being a Warden, needs addressing, but it's obviously not as pressing as the What If scenario posed.

He opens his mouth, thinks for a moment, then says, "I know that it's hard to believe what would happen until it did, for a...situation as dire as that. But I can say with confidence that you would still matter to me. I would still love you, dearly. And I won't let him kill you. I...know you didn't ask about that, but he'd try. You know he would."

Of course he would.

"I...I thought my feelings for him would've faded. But he's struck down to my core and...attached. A part of me will probably always be him, now." He smiles, but it's more of a twitch than something real. "A part of my past, but still...embedded. And I'm sorry for that."

“I don’t want you to be sorry for who you are. My… abuser is part of me, too. I tried to deny that for a long time, but… I’d come to terms with it before I came here.” He presses his lips together. “I’ll try not to… say what I think when Shaw is… lecturing you or whatever. I just… don’t always have good impulse control. She thinks I’m going to keep you from graduating by telling you you’re perfect, no notes, and that you’ll believe me and not listen to her and then you won’t change what needs changed to get out of here. Which… is a perversion of what I actually meant that night, but she won’t hear that. Nobody who came to talk to me about leaving the Wardening to Shaw would hear that. I’m tired of screaming into the void about it. But that’s why - now - a bunch of people apparently think I’m bad for you. Because I’m keeping you from graduating by blindly idolizing you.”

It's an echo of their first conversation, with the vibrations given time to warp. But it comes back in crystal clarity, the same trust even after all the details have been laid out. Malcolm doesn't even hesitate. The things he's worried about are not at all a concern for Will. They are bound tightly now, in their experiences and understanding. Will's not going to let Malcolm go. Not even for Hannibal.

The rest is...well, it doesn't matter as much, but they do need to talk about it. Will leans towards Malcolm and kisses him, softly on the forehead first, and then on the lips. "You want me to graduate more than anyone else here. I know that. But I think...I might've found a hitch in your logic." He's settled now, and he speaks with a gentle tone. "You don't idolize me, but you also think of yourself as...less than you are. You've dug yourself a hole to live in, and you don't belong there."

He puzzles over that.

"What do you mean?" he asks, but it's curious more than anything and there's significantly less anxiety in the way his fingers fidget at the collar of Will's undershirt or lightly along the skin of his neck alongside it.

"You think of yourself as a murderer," Will says softly. "As someone who has committed pre-meditated murder. You haven't. Everything that's happened has been accidents, or you pulled back before you stepped over that line. I was inched over it, but I still crossed it myself. That's...that's why I'm an inmate and you aren't."

He touches Malcolm's face delicately, as if appreciating fine china. "You've come close, and you know you're capable of it. You feel wholly responsible for some deaths. But that doesn't make it so."

“I planned and executed a whole murder,” Malcolm tells him softly. “I did that.”

"You planned one," Will concedes. "You didn't go all the way through with it. I did. I set up circumstances to bait one serial killer with another- including a violent escape- and then I murdered both of them. That was the plan as designed. You-"

He smiles a little, proud and sad at the same time. "You didn't even kill your target. You stopped it, saved him, no matter what happened at that point. Trust me, I know what it is to feel guilty. But even though you've danced in the same space I have, you are not stained the same." Will's eyes search Malcolm's face, hoping he's getting through on some level. "I won't venture a guess as to why, although I imagine it has something to do with the strength of your convictions."

Malcolm’s gaze falls to Will’s chin.

“Maybe I was just afraid that if I let Nicky die, I’d be like him.” His eyes lift to Will’s hesitantly. “What if I liked it?”

In his memory, Martin’s voice: Maybe you’re all torn up inside because getting away with murder didn’t feel bad at all. No. It felt gooooood.

Will is still watching Malcolm's face. His own expression is gentle and accepting, in a way only a few people ever get the opportunity to see. Not only is he not judging, he's been here. He knows the push and pull of that fear inside the gut.

"What if you do? What exactly are you afraid of?" It's an honest question, although Will does venture a guess so they can hopefully get more specific. "That you'll hurt someone the way your father hurt you? That you'll enjoy that?"

"I think if I liked it, I might tell myself I'd... do helpful things with it, get rid of bad guys, but I can see myself sliding down the slippery slope of justification so easily. I don't want to be someone who hurts people for fun. Revenge, first, for those that have hurt me, then punishment for those that have hurt others, then, when those run out at any point... what, vague annoyance starts to call for a death sentence? Rudeness? Disagreement? Where does it stop?" he asks. His expression becomes a little grim, because here is the heart of his fear: "I don't know that I could stop. He couldn't stop."

Will presses a palm to Malcolm's cheek. "You are not your father. You would not paint with the same brush, much less paint similar pictures. You're not a sadist, Malcolm. You genuinely want to help people. None of that is going to disappear."

He's not sure Malcolm will believe that, no matter how much he wants to. "Do you think I've slipped down that slope?" he asks quietly. "Do you think I'm in danger of slipping further?"

"No," he admits. "But you're... stronger than I am. You don't have the... the genetic weakness." His brow creases faintly. "They were all watching me for it. When I was a kid. After he was arrested. ...Maybe I don't have it, but finding out will be too late. The only way to be sure is to just... not test it."

Will's brow knits at being called stronger, and the expression sticks around even after the explanation. He can't easily refute it- Hannibal's words that Will knew better than to breed still sting.

But that's not something to hang an entire life on. Not something to bear when you're already there.

"So you're planning on living in fear about what you could become, for the rest of your life? You've...set up your walls, to try and weather whatever type of storm it turns into?"

"I don't... really know," Malcolm admits. He meets Will's eyes. "Until you, I never really thought of 'the rest of my life' beyond the next case I could cajole someone into letting me work on. I didn't... design anything around anything. The future... just seemed inevitably to be more of the present, marching on and on...." His fingers still a moment and he searches Will's eyes like the answer is in there somewhere. "What do you think I should do?"

Ah. Will knows that march, too. Just 'get through the day' until you get to the next one. Or the next case, the next...attempt on your life. Anything that keeps you distracted.

"I think...you should at least know that it doesn't work. Keeping it locked away and in the dark. All that does is make it more unknown, larger. Scarier. And eventually it'll break through, when you can't control it. And you'll think it's just a...confirmation of everything you feared," he says, pausing to lick his lips.

"Which is why I think it'd be good to let yourself go through some thought experiments. Take down a wall and walk through the space of what entices you and what repulses you. Talk it through with me, even. Test how you feel. See if you need to keep those walls up. See what's you and what's...the specter of your father. And once you know what you've chosen for yourself, we can work together to make sure that happens, with full knowledge."

It's strange to speak so bluntly about something like enjoying violence and murder, but it's freeing, too. He hopes it's the same for Malcolm. "You are so much stronger than you think, you know. You downplay your good, your effort. Even as a child, you saved Gil's life. You did the right thing against all odds."

“I always tell people that I’m not my father. But I think, mostly… I want it to be true.” He finds Will’s eyes with his own again. “Do you think it’s really true?” Sometimes he knows it is, but sometimes he’s not sure. He gets less sure the closer he gets to that edge. But Will’s sharp and he knows killers and he sees people. He’ll know.

Will stares back at him with a small, genuine smile on his face. "It's really true. You aren't your father, not at the core, not even in outside impressions. What you've been through as a child was a great injustice- not just your dad, but the way you were treated after you caught him. But you are not condemned from birth for being your father's son."

He leans forward and kisses Malcolm's forehead gently. It gives him a moment to close his own eyes and hope against hope that Malcolm believes him here, too. "You have had to fight other people's hopes, their fears, their misconceptions almost your whole life. You deserve to know for a fact what actually composes you, how strong you've really been, and how much I love all of it. All of you."

He believes Will. He believes in Will's skill at Seeing People. And it's always easier to see others than it is yourself.

Knowing for a fact what composes him. He... doesn't know what that will be like. What it will look like. He remembers asking Dani what if he makes me who I am? and he was really asking but she didn't have the tools to know the answer to that.

Ultimately, what Will is offering him are the tools to find out himself.

"Okay... how... do we do it? The Enclosure?"

Will hasn't been thinking that far. He'd just wanted Malcolm to consider the idea, so hearing an 'okay' gets a surprised grin out of Will.

"Oh- ...yes, that'd work. Don't even have to go that far to start, if you'd rather not have anything so visceral. I could describe scenarios and you could tell me what you think."

He knows he'd start with revenge scenarios, then trolley problems, then...less obvious choices, until they got to some spaces that were downright murky- and probably past that and into things Will suspects wouldn't interest Malcolm at all. It'd help to have the whole spectrum, so Malcolm knows where he's genuinely not interested.

"But the Enclosure could help add some realism. We'll go at whatever pace you want to.
And I'll be with you the whole way." Because Will knows how scary it is to face this alone.

The fact that Will is pleased with him makes him smile back.

“I always… conceive it in my head. That doesn’t bother me. I think it needs to feel at least a little real to test where the lines are,” Malcolm tells him.

Will nods in agreement. "I wasn't sure how much my experience translated over to yours, but I do understand. Thought I'd give you the easier mode, if that were an option." But they both always end up doing things the difficult way.

"Can I ask what it is you're conceiving of in your head, or do you want to wait until we're getting deeper into this?" Will is so so curious, but he knows this might be pushing. He'll back off the moment Malcolm seems uncomfortable.

"I mean, apart from the murder I did, whenever I investigate a crime scene I always... imagine doing it, from the killer's perspective. Sort of... being the killer in my head helps me... see them," Malcolm explains.

Will gives Malcolm a much-more-often-seen eyeroll as Malcolm says 'the murder I did.' They've already gone over that. It is relevant in this context, but Will wishes he wouldn't put it that way.

The actual answer has Will brightening again. "That's how I do it, too. You step into their shoes and then you know what they did in what order. You see their design by putting it into action." Will tilts his head a bit. "-well...mental action. Do you- uh...do you practically black out when you imagine the murder, or is that one just me?" he adds, looking slightly sheepish.

"Oh... no. That's probably your empathy, actually. It's more like... I don't know. An emotional blueprint? I do... feel what they feel but... I usually know it's not mine," Malcolm explains.

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