PSL: Travels outside the Barge (w/Malcolm)

[empathicfault]

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.

Comments

[empathicfault]

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."

[abrightboy]

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?"

[empathicfault]

"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."

[abrightboy]

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

[empathicfault]

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.

[abrightboy]

“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.”

[empathicfault]

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."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm gives him a sly smile.

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

[empathicfault]

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.

[abrightboy]

“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.

[empathicfault]

Jack's footfalls are not hard to hear. He stops for a mere moment, then stomps down the stairs. He's clearly doing a sweep of the house, and the kitchen will be the last place he checks. As he looks into the study, Will slips out of the pantry and waits behind the half-closed door to the kitchen.

He doesn't direct Malcolm- he figures his husband can decide where he wants to place himself.

Jack pushes the door open slowly, turning on the light in the process. Will lets it swing past him and aims a kick at Jack's knee, which causes the Head of the FBI's Behavioral Unit to fire his gun wildly into the ceiling as he falls to the ground. Will stomps on Jack's gun-wielding hand and hears the bones crunch.

"You're very lucky I don't plan to kill you, Jack. You might not want to push it."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm stays where he is for a moment, until Will knocks Jack down. As Will issues his warning, Malcolm casually steps over and picks up Jack’s gun. He takes out the clip with practiced ease and then empties the chamber before thumbing each bullet out of the clip one by one.

“Glock 19M. A standard issue FBI sidearm.” He examines it, holding it with his free hand. “You clean it about half as often as you should. Careless. Didn’t your firearm instructor at Quantico tell you that could result in a misfire?” He tosses the gun away from himself and finishes emptying the clip before dropping it on the floor.