empathicfault | PSL: Travels outside the Barge (w/Malcolm)

PSL: Travels outside the Barge (w/Malcolm)

Piloting their new ship is a little difficult. It takes reading the (somehow enclosed) manual back-to-front and learning the control panel, now situated in what looks like a little closet on the window side of the living room. It's in the new hallway that leads to the small courtyard, which Will intends to decorate once they get this one chore done first.

Thankfully, the majority of the controls are intuition-based, going off the person who puts their hand on a small orb on the panel. The rest, as it turns out, is tweaking. And luckily (or otherwise), no tweaking is necessary for their first flight.

They're heading to Will's home world.

But Will doesn't specify where, just a year later than he left. he inadvertently brings them to where he'd left. The door opens from a wall of Hannibal's cliffside home, and looks out onto the driveway. The Dragon's wings are still there, staining the cement. They overlook the grey day and the churning seaside.

Will finds himself stuck in the doorway, unsure whether he's compelled to walk out and remember or slam the door shut and take them elsewhere.

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“Because you couldn’t show her all of yourself,” Malcolm surmises. “And she’d know there was a wall she couldn’t get past.”

"Exactly," Will replies. "And thankfully, that doesn't exist with you. There are no great moral compromises that must be made, on either side of the aisle."

Something he hadn't entirely known until recently, but he appreciates all the more for the discovery. He finishes up Malcolm's treat with his customary offering of the last bite back to Malcolm. He's rarely taken up on it, but it's an acknowledgement that it's Malcolm's item, to do with as he wishes.

"I do want to scare the hell out of Jack," he admits, as he puts the dishes they've finished on the indicated rack and turns to leave. "But I would like you to stop me if I get too...into it." He has, at times, gotten too enthusiastic in the past. He'd blame it on the change of becoming a lycanthrope, but it's always been in him.

Malcolm takes the bite this time. Chalk it up to the exceptionally good mood being acknowledged as Will’s most suitable spouse gives him.

He wants to be clear on the parameters of the request, though. Thankfully he has never faced chastising or recrimination from Will for wanting a request to be even more specific or explicit.

“It’s okay if you hit him, but don’t let you kill him?” he asks as they emerge, again, onto the picturesque street.

Will nods in agreement. "I get one punch. You get one, too, if you want it." He looks to Malcolm, smirks, and reaches out to take his hand. "I figure you'll know if I start walking off that path. Jack isn't the reason I went through everything I did. But...he was a very useful knife in Hannibal's many drawers. I don't intend to let Jack forget that."

“I would like to get a good lick in,” Malcolm admits, the warmth of Will’s hand in his feeling like it’s spreading through his whole body. “I know what sort of damage he did for his solve rate. You were just a tool to him. Until you fashioned him into a tool for you.”

Will smiles. It's not a very nice smile, but it is at least sincerely happy. He squeezes Malcolm's hand gently, turning them down an alleyway. "In this world, it's use or be used. I decided to stop presenting myself up as a stepping stone for other people's desires."

His jaw sets...then softens, slightly. "Jack had...extenuating circumstances." Bella. "But no matter what those were, I was never Jack's priority. That became inescapably clear."

He opens their door and is immediately met with happily barking dogs.

"They're always so happy to see us."

He didn't think he'd be able to feel it like he does; he'd never connected with a dog before in his previous life.

He looks a Will sidelong.

"I can't really blame them. I'm really happy to see you if you've been in a different room, too," he admits.

Will looks down as he lets out a chuckle. When he's with Malcolm, it's always a little more shy, as if he's endlessly surprised and delighted by Malcolm's feelings towards him.

"That makes all of us, then," he replies, squeezing Malcolm's hand, then letting it go to bend down and pet the dogs. Franklin seems to be a part of the pack already, wagging and stumbling his way over to the door. He comes up to Malcolm and puts his paws on Malcolm's leg, leaning against him.

Will grins and makes sure they all get a sufficient amount of pets. He can tell they're going to have to schedule a lot of dog time when they're traveling, and won't that be a luxury?

Edited 2025-09-06 20:08 (UTC)

Malcolm laughs when Franklin angles specifically for his attention and he crouches to scratch behind his ears.

He looks over at Will in all seriousness.

“How did you do that? You told him he’s mine and it’s like he knows.”

"Hey, it wasn't me. Dogs are allowed to like you too, you know," he replies matter-of-factly.

He doesn't point out that Malcolm is much easier to get to, for a slower dog, now does he point out that our was Malcolm that saved him from the shelter. He just gets up, gives a couple of finishing pats to Winston and Buster, and starts heading for the console room.

"I'll drop off the phone number for Molly. Then we're headed for Virginia, to assault a government official."

When Will explains about the dog, he studies the puppy's face for a moment, like something will be revealed. But then Will mentions their next activity.

"We're fitting so much into a day!" He enthused, following Will to the console room, Franklin trailing after him clumsily.

It's easy to fit a lot into the day with this ship, and Will can't help but also be enthusiastic about their new home. He leaves the number in 'their tree' at Molly's, folded up into a flat cone shape and settled safely into a piece of broken bark.

Then he has to look through his old cell phone, because he's only been to Jack's house a couple of times. The last, Bella's misery nearly crushed him under its weight.

This time? When he tastes the stale air of dust and melancholy, he drinks it in. He opens their door into Jack's main hallway. As expected, Jack is not in. He sees the alarm pad next to the temperature controls, and he disarms it- it's fairly old and he's familiar with this model.

He opens their door again and waves Malcolm in. "We might have a long wait ahead of us. Feel free to come and rifle through his things. He certainly didn't mind going through mine, when the opportunity arose." Pointedly, he presses his thumb onto a light switch pad as he flicks the lights on. "They'll likely dust for fingerprints afterward, but I doubt you're in the database."

Malcolm grins.

“Let’s see what a self obsessed team leader keeps in his fridge,” he suggests, glancing around and heading for the kitchen.

"My guess? A box of baking soda, some sauces, and leftover pizza."

It turned out to be leftover Chinese takeout, but Will was close. There wasn't much in the fridge. The freezer, however, was full top-to-bottom with microwavable HungryMan meals.

Will's eyes flicker from item to item, cataloguing. The only charm in this place was infused by Bella a decade ago. The kitchen desk has FBI training programs and classes, the board is pinned up with new candidates, and there's a red tomato-sauce stain still on the stove.

"He's a ghost in his own life," Will concludes. "Haunting himself with his own workplace neglect. At least he holds himself to the same standards he holds others, unrealistic though they may be."

“But he doesn’t want more than that. Other people do. Or they might, but he convinces them otherwise when they’re vulnerable. Young…” He glances at Will. “Sick. Guilty.” He looks at the board. “Desperate. Ambitious. Hungry.”

Will practically takes a bow as Malcolm gets into the sick and guilty portion of vulnerability. He thankfully hasn't been either for a long time, now.

He continues Malcolm's thoughts. "Unable to say no, for whatever reason. That's his ideal. He thought he got me back by appealing to my family. Suffice it to say, he did the opposite." No going back to the FBI, no going back to the rubble of a life he'd somehow cobbled together into something functional-looking.

"I think he always knew he was sending me out there to die," he says, with a shake of his head. "At least if I got myself killed, he could be regretful to my corpse. Harder to do when a living, breathing person still exists. And when you know you're still going to use them."

He realizes his voice has gone flat. Part of this is winding himself up, but it's tipped over to being more angry and less fun. They might still be waiting a few hours, after all. "I'm going to see if we got lucky and he forgot his laptop here today."

Malcolm just follows him through the house, glancing around as they go, until he feels compelled to ask about it.

"When did his wife die?"

"I found out she was terminally ill with cancer about a month into working for him," Will says first. "She died just before I sailed to France. Hannibal sent a card to the funeral."

He pauses as he goes through the items in Jack's study, but- no luck on the laptop. It barely looked like Jack had even been in here for years. "Jack thought it was a tease- and it was, of course. But not only that. Bella was one of the few people Hannibal took a genuine liking to."

And being here was settling the dead man further in Will's bones, because Will knows Hannibal's thoughts like they're fact. What had Bedelia said about agency? That Hannibal was the only one who truly had it here. Like a sort of mass sociopathy, where everyone agreed on who the 'real' person was.

"This world isn't good for me," Will confesses to Malcolm, after noticing where his thoughts are taking him. "But we won't be here for too much longer. Just enough for closure."

"Do you still feel him here, even though he's gone?" Malcolm asks quietly. He doesn't mean Jack.

Will had been about to head up the stairs, but he stops in the hallway at the question. He thunks his head back against the wall, solid but gently. His eyes slip halfway shut.

"I do. It's like he's...ingrained into the fabric of this universe. And now he's gone, and I'm the only piece of him left here, to make sense of this madness. It's..." He trails off and looks at Malcolm, his own expression somewhere between lost and resigned. "It's easier than ever to see his point of view. And I want this to be mine."

His words to Jack. His punch. His victory. Something to share with Malcolm, as he desires.

“It is yours, though,” Malcolm points out. “If you think about it, Jack never did anything but favours for Hannibal. Not the least of which was handing you to him on a silver platter. You’re the one that has a real quarrel with him. And I do, because he was careless with you and could have broken you and he was okay with the possibility of that outcome, just like Hannibal was. When it comes down to it, both of them only wanted you for what you could do with them. For how they could… use your ability to direct you and glorify themselves. Laying him out on the carpet… that’s your righteous anger talking.” He steps close enough to lay his hand over Will’s heart. “Your justified rage. Your street justice. Your… fitting farewell to all this.”

No one here would ever argue these details with him. While Will looks like he'll step forward with a rebuttal, Malcolm's reminder that he too has a bone to pick takes a lot of the steam out of it.

"There's more I would do," he says, biting his lip and worrying it for a moment. "If I was stuck here."

He looks up at Malcolm again and gives him a small, conspiratorial smile. "But I'm not." Not alone again. Ever. Not subsumed, not tolerated. He can still be himself and only seek to edit a little for the sake of avoiding demotion.

This discussion seems to have sparked something. His eyebrows raise as he thinks it over. "I might give him a taste, of what he'd made of me...before the Barge picked me up."

Malcolm gives him a sly smile.

"I assume you don't mean pancaked at the bottom of a cliff.'

That tickles a sincere chuckle out of him. "I do not."

With twinkling eyes, he adds, "You'll see. -or rather, hear. In a little bit."

It does take several hours for Jack to come home, the time pushing 11pm when he arrives. Will's had a couple of frozen meals by then. When Will finally hears the car pulling into the driveway, he shuffles them both to the walk-in pantry, shuts the door, and pulls out the burner phone. They'll just have to get another.

Jack walks in and tosses his keys onto a small dish on the table by the entrance. He sets his bag down by the chair and pauses for a moment- contemplating the solitude, Will guesses- before he starts heading up the stairs.

Will calls the number he remembers. He can hear it ringing. "This is Jack," he hears on the phone, voice curt.

"I start with the back, flaying the skin and pulling it taught. The time I knew I had to stop. The time I was told I'd regret stopping. This one gets his wings first."

He'll credit Jack, he's hoofing it up those steps as quietly as he can.

"Will?? Will, I-"

"I hang the skin with lures, recreating the ones that were used to frame me. The lies that were believed. You will not want to stay where I put you, so I set up an IV full of curare to keep you still. Still, but feeling. Because the pain is something you need to experience first-hand."

Will's not reacting to Jack, which is becoming harder with every word uttered. The man is not trying to be quiet anymore, now booming so hard he's easy to hear through the walls. Pleas at first, but by this point it's more of a command. "You have to stop this, you can't become everything you hated!"

Will continues, and Jack has to lower his voice eventually to hear him. Will hears the landline dialing in background, just the clicks of the receiver moving. "I mount your body on a stag's head, chest down. The wings need to stand tall."

"If this is a threat, you picked the dumbest--"

"Once mounted, I stuff a perfect replica of Goya's Tan bárbara la seguridad como el delito into your mouth. And then I leave you. You'll have to wait until someone comes to save you. Or...not."

He lets Jack get out another belligerent word, but he doesn't hear it. He only hears his own voice now, saying, "This is my design."

He disconnects the call. Jack should be noticing the displaced items in his bedroom right about now...even if he's still apparently screaming into the phone. Will squeezes Malcolm's hand in the dark, but the low light still reveals the contentment on his face. He's in his element.

“I love Goya,” Malcolm whispers. “It was a nice touch. No other artist captures the desolation of the soul the way he did.”

Even while he whispers, his head is tilted slightly, listening for Jack’s footfalls or his voice.

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