[OOM] dealer of my heavy hand

[collects_strays]

All he hears is the sound of water. Sometimes there are voices, vibrations through the tide, and he doesn’t know who, or where, they come from. Graham does know that he's awake, has been awake. He knows pressure on his lips and tongue, and the stinging scent of fresh flowers. His body functions in a series of instinctual commands, none more conscious than a heartbeat – it knits itself together, it consumes, it reacts. Sometimes it speaks; more vibrations plucked along the water. He doesn't always know when this comes from his throat, or only his mind. He seems to get a response either way.

He can stand, can walk over the cool tile floor to the bathroom. He can barely sit up in bed. There are gray walls and glass doors, soft sunlight through tall, slender windows, red-drenched walls and paper curling into black ash in the large fireplace. There must be order to it, but he can't keep track. The past and the future look the same to him, both as distant as a dream upon waking. Folding into one another like shades in a kaleidoscope. He lies in bed in Hannibal's office, the light from the fireplace flickering along the ceiling above him. He steps down to the hospital tile, and his feet touch the stone floor of the Capella Palatina.

He smells steel and oil, knows the vibrations of Jack Crawford's voice behind him, sees sunlight ripple over metal fastenings. He smells copper, and he's on the kitchen floor again, next to Abigail.

He wanted yous to live.

It's peaceful. Or it could be. The certainty that he had no interest in "recovery." His body might insist on it, but he doesn't want to undo it. He doesn't want to forget, doesn't want to move forward. He doesn't know what he would move toward. He knows he can stay still, and quiet. He doesn't even need to swim against the current to drown. There are worse fates.

Except.

He wanted -

---

She's sitting on the steps of his porch, rubbing under Buster's chin. He'd noticed the tire tracks as he drove in, had known who would be waiting for him. She smiles as he approaches, automatic and defensive, like raising a knife. Buster slips away from her hand, moves toward him, but she stays on the steps. He stops just short of her.

"Can I help you, Margot?"

She finally rises, easing off her smile. "Let me take your bag," she says.

He waits a moment, then shifts the brown paper sack in his arms, handing it off to her. The dogs follow them up onto the porch as Graham unlocks the front door. Margot walks past him inside, through the dark front room, and back toward his kitchen. Graham takes off his coat and scarf and hangs them by the door before following her. Her white gloves are on the kitchen table. She has switched on a light, unbuttoned her own coat but left it on. The sack is also left on the table by her gloves, save for the bottle of whiskey she's pulled out of it. Forgoing tumblers, she takes two water glasses and pours about two fingers in each.

"Why are you here, Margot?" He'd meant it to sound harder than it does, but somehow he can't work up the energy for it. She turns to the table, and sets a glass down near him, before lifting her own. "I thought I wasn't of any more use to you."

Margot shrugs as she lowers her glass again. "I wasn't so sure."

He breathes in, and out, and picks up his glass. "How's Mason?"

Her glass snaps down on the table. She turns away from him, folding her arms, and Graham watches her step slowly back toward the counter.

"We're closer than ever." Margot looks out through the windows, onto the snow-covered fields that stretch beyond the house, and the still, barren trees in the distance. "That's what I've been saying. He made sure he had something I needed, and now I'm getting him in his chair and taking his calls. He needs me, and I need him."

"Your relationship with him only functions when you're in distress." He speaks slowly, aware the words don't feel very much like his own. "If he does need you, he'll do anything to keep you that way."

Margot doesn't answer this. After another moment at the window, she turns back to him. "He's hell-bent. That bounty's on you too, you know."

Graham only raises his eyebrows, and takes another sip from his glass.

"He can't take you from here," she says, acting equally aloof. "Even he needs to be more subtle than that. But anyone after Hannibal Lecter will know."

"Hannibal Lecter isn't here."

"And he didn't let you forget it." She moves back, closer to him. Her indifference dropped as quickly as it came, she looks to him with real concern. "He branded you."

He doesn't look back at her. Dull, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"No need." It's quiet. Margot doesn't smile. "Everyone's seen yours."

There's silence, and then he does look back to her. Graham smiles, and raises his glass in a facetious toast, before finishing it off. She watches him for another moment, then moves away, to pick up her own glass again.

"You aren't who I hoped I'd see."

He doesn't speak, and rather than drink, she looks down at the tall glass, swaying it slightly in her hand and watching its contents spin.

"Was it –"

"It was real."

Again, he can't seem to let her go on alone. She nods, not looking at him, but he can see her eyes getting bright in the light through the windows. "And this is?"




"Also real."

She takes a breath. "So..."

"Self is a consequence of social ties." His voice is still, dispassionate. It edges toward curious as he asks, "What do you see, Margot?"

She does look back at him. Full-on, and steady, as though if she could watch long enough, she could will herself to see what she wanted. But eventually, she drops her gaze, back down to her glass. "I spent a long time feeling trapped because I couldn't be what everyone else saw. And you have to be."

"Sometimes."

Margot downs her own drink, setting it back on the table. But to his surprise, she looks back up, and starts to approach him again. As she does, something clenches in his chest. An ache that's become unfamiliar to him, that wrenches painfully as she gets closer.

"I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. "Don't."

At first, he thinks she's going to embrace him. He narrowly keeps himself from flinching back, but she only reaches out one hand, and he stays still as she touches his chest. He can feel the vibrations of his pulse against her fingers, and when Margot closes her eyes, he does, as well.

For a few seconds, they both listen to the steady rhythm of her heartbeat.

By the time Graham has opened his eyes, Margot has withdrawn her hand, and is retrieving her gloves from the table. She doesn't look at him again as she walks past him, through the kitchen door.

"Goodbye, Will."

---

He doesn't turn on a lamp when he enters the house. Graham removes his coat, slips off his glasses, and sits down in an armchair near the window. There's enough moonlight through the glass that he can see dim white outlines and long, distorted shadows. Along the desk at the window, the back of the chair facing him. It's enough to read the name on he opened envelope in his hands – Graham holds it by the tips of his fingers, like something delicate or dangerous.

Despite this, he doesn't set it aside. He leans back in the chair, and reads the name again.