[OOM] you won't be the same again

[collects_strays]

When he returns, Graham sets aside his keys and phone, but leaves his long coat on. He pulls a flashlight out of a cupboard in the kitchen, and the shotgun from under his desk. The dogs gather at the back door, a few of them pawing at it and whining as they wait, while he turns off every lamp in the house. Left in the dark, he clicks on the flashlight, and opens the door, watching the dogs run out into the field.

As he follows, the house fades into the darkness behind him. Nothing to look back to, no safety – the night stretches out like open water. Some of the dogs keep close to the beam from his flashlight. He hears the large ones barking in the distance, the moonlight dim enough that he can't make out their shapes. Usually, he lingers back, letting them race off and return when they're ready. But tonight he keeps walking, barely looking to the path the flashlight sets out for him. His eyes adjust well enough that he can see where the line of trees brush the night sky. Soft panting and rustling in the grass lets him know the dogs are still following him.

The dogs walk with him into the trees. He knows the area, has walked every acre around this property. He knows the trees should soon thin out again, continuing in sparse, unchecked woodlands that eventually made way for the neighboring fields. But as they walked, the forest seem to grow denser. The dogs gather closer as the terrain becomes unfamiliar to them, and the only light remaining is Graham's flashlight. It glows over underbrush, scattered leaves and thick tree roots, long vines and the remnants of wildlife – burrow holes and bite marks and hoof prints in soil. He doesn't raise his light from the earth, unsure he wants to look between the trees.

That's not what I'm asking.

There are moments when he feels the prickle on his neck of eyes watching him, but it seems to flicker in and out. The dogs don't bark or growl to announce any approach, predator or prey.

It's the same thing isn't it.

Slowly, the moonlight grows brighter again. It soaks the landscape ahead of them. Graham clicks off his flashlight, and the dogs brush by him as they rush forward. Now he can watch them as they dart through the remaining forest, beyond the last of the trees. He doesn't follow, only stepping close enough to see the shore up ahead. The light reflected in the lake, wide ripples sliding over the surface of the water. The dogs silhouetted against it as they approach. They're barking again, something he knows – calling out. Recognition.

He's gone from the forest before they return.

---

The first thing we lose is time.

This is the moment when he knows, when he understands, finally, what will happen. He'd thought time would drain away, slip down into a steady rhythm that would then simply patter out. In his cell, Graham had felt time seep out of him. Even with fixed points, with meals and occasional glimpses of sunlight, it had held so little meaning there. It bled away, slowly, even as he'd tried to hold it in. It was when he'd been doing all he could to cling to survival.

With an end in sight, he'd begun to unhook himself from life. Contained the way it spilled out into the spaces around him by leaving his possessions in those evidence boxes, by keeping his counters clean and cleared. He'd spoken more concisely, had found himself measuring his words against what they would bring him. Showed only enough emotions to prove he had them. He'd thought knowing there was an end, feeling the rattle of the approaching train that he meant to let smash through him, would help him contain what would follow.

But this is when he feels it, that time doesn't seep out of him. It hasn't drained around this moment. It unwinds. As much as he'd tried to keep his space contained, time spills out, moments splashing over one another, staining them. Distance, and having it, is a coping mechanism. When time passes, the shattered pieces of something once whole become familiar. Entropy doing its work. But when it doesn't, when it unmoors from anything fixed, sloshes over from one point to the next, there is no distance.

He knows now that he hadn't stopped what was coming, had let any chance he'd had to change it pass on. What he could do now, all he could do now, was try to derail it.

Graham picks up the phone, and he confesses.

They know.



And then he knew. Not why, or how, but what was happening. That he wasn't still, that he hadn't made it all go away. He wasn't wading into anything, and his eyes are open, and he is awake.

He opens his mouth, and his throat fills with water.



Rain collects into pools along the stone path, ripples spreading and intersecting. Alana is lying on the doorstep – she looks to him but doesn't seem to see him, eyes see too much, don't see enough. The blood on the concrete next to her is red and vivid in the sunlight, she grabs at his arms, pulls him to her even as her grasp weakens, her breathing is loud and rasping and he takes off his already-soaked coat to cover her from the rain



Darkness presses against his eyes. But there is texture to it, shapes that seem raised out of it, or sunken into it. It changes; he can't feel if he's moving his eyes, or his head, but it changes when he knows it should. As he watches, he can see, distantly, patches of it softening. From barely discernible into the deep gray of storm clouds. Seeming as far from him as if he were looking up from the earth, rippling in impossible ways.



Graham pulls out his gun as he enters the house. Sunlight is still catching in his eyes, flecks of blood on his glasses. He's not wearing them.

He knew the hall that winded into the kitchen, but he'd known from the first time he'd walked through it. He knew in the Hobbs house, following the sound of Abigail's voice, where he was heading. In New Orleans, he'd been known for how he could often tell where the occupants were in any given building, could pick out loose floorboards or unscrewed vents or other means of hiding away evidence. Most homes are built in predictable patterns, and the signs of life inside them, gleaming floors or stained rugs, old photographs or artwork, all told him how the space was lived in. That life always circled around the kitchen – it hummed through any home like a heartbeat.

He doesn't hear voices, as he steps through the hall. His ears and nose still feel thick with rainwater, but he sees blood pooling out from under the pantry door, tastes the iron in it in his mouth, and his hands begin to shake.

I don't need a sacrifice.

The hum rises like a wave, the voice in the Hobbs house pulls him forward, he barely checks the corners as he turns into the kitchen.



The silence crushing into him isn't silence. Before he could hear his own breathing, in wretched gasps, and hers in sudden frantic bursts. Now he can't hear anything. But everything is so loud, he can't discern anything from it. All sound roils up and tamps down in near perfect unison.



He was loving –

Abigail raises her eyes, just barely. It's all she needs to do.

When he turns, Graham doesn't see antlers. No lean, shadowed figure, no haze, or suffocating scent of smoke. It's not light, and air, and color. His gun stays lowered at his side, he can't seem to lift his hands, can barely seem to feel them. Hannibal's hand on his face is the gentle pull of the current, forward and down. Numb with shock, he can't feel fear, or fury, or anything else. There's just the coppery smell that stings his nostrils, the air around them thick with screams smeared on it, the eyes that look into his that don't belong to any animal, or ghost, or monster. And the flash of knowing that wherever the current pulls him, he's not going to fight it any longer.

But now, it wouldn't have him.

- right up until the second he wasn't.


"You say he was loving, I believe it. That's what you brought out in him.

Abigail's eyes are wide, bright blue in the light that filters through the greenhouse walls. She has barely looked at them, speaking with her eyes averted, watching the ceiling or the opposite wall. But she looks to Graham as he speaks, and holds his eyes as she answers.

"It's not all I brought out in him."


His hand are wet. Before they were pressed to his stomach, but he can move them. Can feel them moving, his arms shoving through the resistance gathered against them. He kicks his legs, not out of effort, but out of instinct. It's a reflexive jolt in his knees; he tries to stop and can't.



Abigail Hobbs stands in her kitchen. It may be mostly empty now, nearly everything packed into cardboard boxes marked 'evidence.' It may be in a house that is no longer her home. But this kitchen is hers - she's all over it. There are windows behind her that look out into the backyard – sometimes when she knew her father was out there, she lifted backed the curtains and waved to him. She's in every photo on the refrigerator, which have been turned down, so that she can only see the notes her mom had written on them. She's in the magnets that hold the photos in place, the fake pushpins she'd bought for herself, a few of having found their way to the kitchen, and the one shaped like sprigs of asparagus that she'd bought at the farmers' market.

She's in the clean and empty sink, where she'd washed the dishes that morning. And she's all over the floor, even if she can't see it anymore.

Even if she doesn't know it yet.

She's walking along the edge of a wall, silent, waiting to glimpse through to the other side of it. Unlike him, she hadn't rattled her bars. She's sitting at the long dining room table, across from him, eyes flickering between them as she moves her knife across her plate. Even if he didn't see it then, and wouldn't now. He'd thought he was carrying her weight, like her voice in his throat and her ear in his stomach, determined not to let that go. But he was wrong.

She's in her father's cabin, stepping back toward the antlers, and he lifts her up and pierces her through them. He calls her a killer and plainly feels her lies when she denies it, until she turns away, runs down the stairs, footsteps echoing through the musty loft, through his head as he loses sight of it. Abigail had carried her own weight, to the only place that could have still been made for her.

Nothing in this kitchen is hers, and she's all over it.

Do you understand?
The most terrifying thing in the world can be a lucid moment.



He understands. He can't breathe, all he can see is the river.

He's drowning.

And he lets that consume him. Stops trying fight his instinct, lets himself kick at the dark water. He swallows the what's in his throat and it burns in his stomach. The knowledge cracks through his skull, as though this was what it had taken to let the weight of the water above begin to crush him. And he could let it, even as his body fought on. But now that he knows those rippling storm clouds are the tide passing above him, rising and falling in unison, he can't ignore it.

As long as he can see the surface, he won't fall from it.

So he kicks down, not a reflexive jolt but strong and familiar. He moves his hands outward, pressing through the water, keeping his head up, even as the pressure against it worsens. The current pulls at him, and he only resists it enough to move closer to the brightening clouds. The light above seems to coalesce as he grew closer, collecting into one bright circle above him. There is less resistance, but his legs slows, his arms sagging and unable to take the weight in his head, his eyes close.

He reaches out, and his hands are cold. Then he lifts his head, and gasps in, the same steep, wretched breathes, but they no longer seem to tear him open. Graham opens his eyes again, water dripping in with the moonlight. Despite what had felt like a crushing rise and fall below, in seconds he can tell that the surface of the water is smooth, that sound of the tide lapping along the a shore in the distance soft in his ears.

He closes his eyes again, coughing up water, and follows that sound. Graham keeps his eyes shut until he feels the water becoming shallow, his hands reach into mud and wet sand, which is the moment that he beings to shake. He coughs up more water, pulling himself up onto the shore of the lake, just far enough that he won't slip back into the tide. There's a new sound growing in the distance, but he doesn't register it, can't seem to let himself accept it yet. When he opens his eyes, he's looking down, along his chest to his abdomen. His shirt is stained, but he's not bleeding.

It doesn't relieve his shaking. He starts breathing harder, maybe because he knows he can. His arms give way, and he sinks, face half-buried in the sand.

It's barking. Recognition, in every meaning, flickers on. The barking, the soft jangle of their collars, the footsteps through the sand. Graham waits, shaking turning to shivering, as the dogs collect around him, their dark forms rising out from the night.