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.