infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

Of course it's fair game. I wouldn't put anything on it publicly if I wasn't comfortable with it being found, by you or anyone else. [More Freddie's thing, isn't it.] Have you been doing well, too?

[No haunted dreams disturbed by Abigail, he hopes. No conversations about Abigail's behavior in the house, he hopes. God please no.]

Why?

[Which is not the initial text one wants to send, if one wants to communicate that all is well and nothing is awry. His biggest personal conflicts (Danger, Gideon to and extent) and his recently minted dramatic turns (Karla) are not what he wants to discuss.]

Everything is fine. Even one of my housemates has returned again.

[He was, of course, referring to Troy.]

[sources say that the Porter has brought in multiple cannibals, potential psychopaths and confirmed killers--one of which has attacked an upstanding member of the import community at least twice. gets typed, backspaced, retyped, backspaced, stared at multiple times, finally left alone.]

After he left a famous actor alone on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific. I saw. Seems like an interesting one to have around the house. Good with kids. [April likes Troy. Will likes April. Troy is on the sniffing list more than before, so it goes.] I asked how you were doing because it seemed politer than asking what you wanted.

[He's not used to people from Baltimore contacting him just to talk. Jack Crawford calls him to cases, not to invite him for dinner with his wife. Left alone until he's needed.]

[The brusqueness takes him by surprise -- it shouldn't, he knows it shouldn't. But Chilton plays a different game, doesn't he, one with arsenic-laced smiles and feisty rejoinders. Chilton seeps into someone's mind to provoke people into murderers, and Will Graham could very well end up hunting those murderers.

Or that was the pattern, in a different world.]

I noticed Hannibal hasn't been floating beside you, at least not on the Network. I watch you, you watch me, and we all have tabs on our own. Are you still seeing him?

[Chilton is free to keep his arsenic-laced smiles and feisty rejoinders; Will Graham is much more adept at openly accusing his psychiatrist of being lazy and then turning the question back on him. Sometimes he wonders if that was the same old song and dance he went through with Chilton, wonders how much information got passed along from Lecter, wonders what sort of patient he might have been. Never ideal, but a pain in the ass from lack of verbal cooperation must have been much more preferable to a pain in the ass because he had a habit of violence if not shackled down, mustn't it?]

The floating, as you call it, is a given. Just because it doesn't show up doesn't mean it's not going on. [By which he means he's totally aware that Lecter doesn't have to say anything to be there, that every single thing he's ever put on the network might have been read, followed, filed away for later. Lecter's pretty good at not being in the same city and still lingering, isn't he.] Dr. Lecter and I have continued our conversations, same as always. I haven't spoken to Gideon in a while. Abigail stops by the shop frequently, and we spent the weekend out. Freddie Lounds and I had our drinks as well, in case she didn't tell you. Thank you for playing wingman to that, by the way. That covers all of Baltimore, I think.

[And gives Chilton a little more to chew on. In all honesty, the only thing Will really sees as forthcoming is the bit about Freddie—Abigail was out of the house for the weekend, his shop's open six days a week, it's not exactly a difficult conclusion to come to. Though the way he words it, that he includes the we in relation to just him and Abigail, he wonders if it's enough to poke at the back of Chilton's head. That the cogs will turn and click into place, Will Graham taking Abigail Hobbs out just the two of them, no Crawford, no Bloom, no Lecter. Not his usual thing, considering the last trip Abigail and he took alone turned out so poorly. He and Freddie agreed it was best for the others not to know that Will knew, and he thinks that's as good an idea as he could have come up with at the time.

But this isn't talking about it directly, is it. This is not a flat-out admission that he has been given certain information from a certain someone. This is something that has to be read into, this is something that can be looked at and easily denied as a confession, as an I got some details, I'm stepping carefully. That "thank you" can be dismissed as sarcastic instead of anything genuine (which if he reads into it enough, he might find it grateful). This can go plenty of ways, can be defended as Will sharing more than he has to in order to get Chilton off his case than what it really is. And as long as he stays where he's from, as long as his last true memory of the world back home is falling asleep in a car with the only person he could ever count on, he finds that last one to be rather believable.

As long as he greets Hannibal Lecter the same as he had before the conversation with Freddie, as long as he indulges him, as long as he all but wags his tail—anything else being read into this should Lecter find it could prove an admission of guilt. Because Will's still the Will he was before the conversation with Freddie, has not changed in the slightest. It's entirely possible that Will and Freddie had drinks, discussed Abigail Hobbs and cleaning up Tattlecrime and nothing else. Judging by Will's behavior around Lecter and Abigail? What he's told them? Seems to be exactly what happened. Especially since Freddie left out the little detail of what the Ripper does with his trophies, which makes it so much easier to have their conversations over breakfast.

Everyone plays the game differently, don't they.]

You had drinks with Freddie Lounds.

[Priorities misaligned? You could argue that, certainly -- but Hannibal Lecter will always be the haunting specter ravenous, his plans always in motion and only exposed when it's much too late. Lounds and Graham having a drink is akin to something from the apocalypse.]

I'm hesitant to claim any influence over that event.

[Wingman indeed. Chilton assumed the worst: scheming.]

[He can't really be bothered by this reaction; Freddie Lounds and Will Graham having drinks on his budget is rather surreal. It was on his mind enough while they were out.]

"Are we not meant to take Will Graham's declarations as sincere?" You didn't recognize the lyrics to Puppy Love, either? I sing it all the time in the shower at home, I assumed you'd been privy to a serenade or two.

[That is 100% bullshit. Will's just hesitant to claim what could be taken as any real despair over people not recognizing a song that's about dogs but not actually about dogs.]

Whatever the case may be, it was thanks to your conversation that we did, in fact, end up going out for drinks. Surely there are worse things for you to claim influence over.

This may come as a surprise to you, but Lounds keeps her business obscured. She, of all people, appreciates the value of privacy.

[Something that Chilton couldn't afford now, thanks to Danger.]

But she's not here, is she? So. How did it go?

I will tell Freddie Lounds you are eager to play her heroic defender. I'm sure she'll appreciate that as much as she appreciates the value of privacy.

[It's better than starting in on how Freddie's inability to value other people's privacy nearly led to Abigail Hobbs, comatose, being turned into a mushroom garden. That's not exactly a fun conversation to have. With anyone.]

She had a martini, I had whiskey. We talked about our powers here and throwing Gideon under a bus. I'm sure you've noticed Tattlecrime is back up and running without hideous music that can't be stopped and obnoxious font choices, haven't you? That's how it went.

The bus mentioned being in an idiomatic sense, of course.

[Don't want Chilton thinking they'd have a Gideon bus party without him.]

Don't tell her that. She hates any implication that she requires some degree of rescue, as if she isn't self-sufficient. And don't inform her about what I just said, either. I'm not formally psychoanalyzing her, she just makes it so obvious.

[But after defending himself in his most Chiltonesque of fashions, he eases into Will's descriptive text with not just a little intrigue.]

The homage to mid-nineties internet expanse wasn't her intention? Hard to tell sometimes, the woman favors leopard print. This entire conversation is confidential, by the by, just between us.

[The gossip.]

But tell me more about your conversation with Gideon. He's behaving only because Doctor Lecter is around, you know.

Edited 2014-09-23 01:59 (UTC)

[Anyone passing by Hook, Line, & Tinker is in for a rare treat, because he does, in fact, laugh at this message.]

All conversations remain confidential unless a good reason crops up. I cannot think of a single good reason to share with anyone that you and I talked about Freddie Lounds like those old biddies who were upset about the librarian with her dirty books and brazen overtures to old miser Madison.

[Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more. They're being gossipy shits at the moment and he can't be bothered to pretend otherwise. Why not make it obvious?]

We were discussing ways to keep focus on me out of Tattlecrime in order to get it away from the homage that it had become. Gideon's the obvious target after me, isn't he? To quote an older article: "Aside from noted cases of import mischief, assault, and possession performed by people such as Lucifer and the mysterious Manipulator, sources say that the Porter has brought in multiple cannibals, potential psychopaths and confirmed killers--one of which has attacked an upstanding member of the import community at least twice." Are you telling me she did you a solid and you haven't already started playing ball with Freddie Lounds? I don't know how he's behaving. I only go by most houses in Heropa, not in them. I shot him in the head. I assumed it would be best to keep my distance unless something necessary came up. Do you think I should check in with Gideon?

[He is sidestepping that last part as best he can. A lot of responses come to mind, ranging from Isn't it amazing what a good psychiatrist can do with other people's patients, just by their mere presence? to Stop saying "you know" knowing I don't know. But they all drive the conversation further along the line of Hannibal Lecter and who he really is, and that?

That's a little too direct. Better to volley it back, for Will Graham to ask—with what could be read as sincerity—for Chilton's opinion.]

I've read that article, in fact. And as I am quite clearly the upstanding citizen aforementioned [he says without a trace of irony] I can assure you that the nod was as surprising to me as any other avid reader.

I saw it as an invitation.

[Loquacious as he is now, discussing himself and notable nods, when Will asks about Gideon there's radio silence on Chilton's end for a few moments. Chilton reads it as a subtle dagger -- "come into my web", or "get back into the coop, nothing to fear". Will was a sieve, and he would take from Hannibal in little ways. Predatory impulses were part of the package, and to be expected.]

The man is a bit stressed.

[Because Hannibal, clearly not the better psychiatrist, killed him.

And Hannibal killed Gideon, Chilton was convinced, to get to him. Not that anyone was much talkative about the subject, and even Freddie would only allude to certain facts -- the bulk of sequence Chilton figured out for himself.

This -- contrasted with how Karla had murdered her own psychiatrist? Well, Chilton's lopsided morality allowed for that. He was never in that dead man's seat.]

Don't provoke him, he might murder again.

["Behaving well" only meant "behaving well to me." Gideon had regressed, in other traumatizing ways -- but who said Will needed to know those details?]

[He has to wrinkle his nose at avid reader—Will, an avid reader of Tattlecrime. Something out of the apocalypse indeed, but for any jabs at him that might have been present, there were stories that either only Freddie Lounds could get (now amplified) or stories that he might not find anywhere else. At least, not with her spin on it. And as much of a bitter flavor it might have put in his mouth, it was still familiar. Homey. Helpful to have that in such a messed up world, though he wasn't going to easily fess up to that. Easier to fess up to it as one of his tracking methods. If Freddie was still doing Tattlecrime, she was fine. If pictures popped up that indicated she was in too deep, it was good for him to know. History justified that one.

His assumptions about the whys of Chilton being anything like an avid reader weren't ones he intended to share.]

I don't want him to murder again. [This has to be worded carefully, doesn't it? Otherwise it sounds like the outright accusation it isn't and he'd rather this conversation not sour completely. Good thing Gideon's a murderer back home, makes that again less of a questionable choice.] He was your patient for almost two years. I've only met him a few times. You'd know better than me what it takes to provoke him. Would hearing from me at all serve as provocation?

[Met him and done his thing a few times, but can they ignore that? He'd like to ignore that. It would be good to ignore that. Can he just take it as deference and answer, can he just play along, talk, talk, talk, share his opinion. Don't read into this one. It's not meant as predatory—anything that might have been got passed over when he was more focused on drinks with Lounds and Graham, apocalyptic scenario ripped from some curious team up, movie released with Tarantino and Romero at the helm.]

Seeing an invitation isn't the same as RSVPing. Have you checked it recently? There's video footage of the De Chima dogfight she mentioned. That was at my government housing.

[Someone already sent in his own form of an RSVP. Will's playing ball with Freddie Lounds. Will Graham. Playing ball. Without Jack Crawford forcing him to sit still and yanking the leash back when he seems ready to throw the bat at her. He's already rolling in the mud here. If the two Freds have gotten together in any way shape or form, he won't be surprised. Or capable of judging for it. He's missing quite a few details (Danger can be killed, Karla's "reformed" from murdering people uh what?, Hannibal rhymes with cannibal), to be sure, but at least he's wearing his uniform and the basics for the game.]

You might be too late for that.

[He won't say it, not fully. He won't admit what he knows about Danger dying by Gideon's hands, he won't indulge Will Graham with that force of knowledge. But it's a little funny, isn't it? A little tragic, the will of this killer-catcher (a killer himself, even if it was just Hobbs) living amidst killers.

Well, and Freddie Lounds.]

But no, I suggest you concern yourself more with Hannibal than with Abel. You are so intimate with Doctor Lecter, after all.

[This diversion wasn't a claim on Gideon -- Chilton had already abandoned that project, long ago, much as it pained him. Two years is such an investment.]

I must have missed the details of such charming footage. You'll have to forgive me. Recent events have been somewhat hectic.

Usually am.

[Part of the job, being late. Finding the aftermath, the ones that can't be saved. At all. There is too much Hannibal Lecter in this conversation, as far as Will is concerned. Too much for it to be good if it ended up shared, willingly or otherwise. Time to shut it down, bit by bit. Lead up to it.]

I'm as concerned with him as I need to be. Let's leave it at that. [Patients getting too concerned with their psychiatrists can go in such poor places; he's not running the risk of getting that accusation. Will's constant shuffling through the Network to glean every word that comes from the Baltimore crew isn't the same—not that he expects everyone outside them to get that, of course.] Regular sort of hectic or am I not supposed to ask?

[Killer-catcher living amidst killers, not what he wanted out of life. A little tragic, to be sure, but there's burden on his shoulders, too. He can find another job. He knows where they keep files for resignation, knows how to write a letter. He's played his own part in it. There might be a grouping of them here, too, but he's got a vampire/wolf/human and a pot dealer who turns into a dog as roommates. There are plenty of distractions to be found under his own damn roof.]

If it has anything to do with Abigail in the house, I'd prefer you tell me bluntly. I can't control her, but I can and will talk to her if she's doing something she can control and shouldn't.

[Something she can control—oh yes, he saw those conversations about nightmares. He heard how she woke up from her coma, the climbing walls, talked to the staff at Port Haven. Perhaps he can be imagined as the anguished not-actual-father who's just trying to do right this time, worried about his little girl but unable to bring himself to get close enough that they'd be in the same house, restless about how she is, what's going on with her, perhaps even jealous that someone who isn't him or someone who people might think he doesn't approve of is nearby.

In reality, at the moment, anything he can do to get this talk away from Lecter is what he'll do. Invoking the name of Abigail Hobbs is as good a shift as any.]

Abigail Hobbs? We've talked only briefly, and most of that has been over the Network. She is not particularly fond of my company. [Understatement.] And I'll be the first to admit that I'm not keen on children. I assure you, I'm staying out of her way as much as she's staying out of mine.

[That served a mutual utility. Chilton had to tread carefully around Abigail, knowing that both Hannibal and Will took an interest in the girl. To say that he avoided excessive contact with the above (one only because of the lure he proved to be for the other) would be the second understatement established within a few breaths.]

Did you notice that Danger had gone missing?

[It wasn't a misdirection, this forceful diversion.]

I'm not sure if you are indeed in frequent contact with her, or not.

Even so, if anything crops up? Feel free to let me know. I extended her the same in regards to you.

[She can't punch Chilton, house rule. Will has the feeling that of the three adults here who have any real impact on Abigail's life, the most educated and seemingly respectable of the three of them is the last one that Frederick Chilton (or anyone, really) would want to go reporting to. He can't blame him for that one.

Misdirection, diversion, whatever it was, Will didn't mind it. His answer wasn't anything that spoke well of his abilities with people, but that's the least of his problems.]

Had? So you're saying she's back? I hadn't noticed, no. Do you mean gone missing the way you and Gideon went missing or something else? Danger and I haven't spoken since Abigail got here. I kept meaning to remedy that.

[But Abigail. But Lecter. But Will sucks. He really should say something (if had is purposefully used to mean she's back), especially now that the rather cryptic parts of her talk with him last make an alarming amount of sense.

Makes him wonder how she knew. If maybe Chilton told her. Who else would tell her, Gideon? Did Freddie? Did everyone else get the 411 before him, had they planned that one out, was it universally agreed on to keep Will in the dark?]

You're truly connecting Abigail and myself, aren't you?

[It was more sardonically typed than not, and only partially intended to get under Will's skin. The attempt was lackluster, and the effect was likely even more tepid -- Chilton's focus remained on their alternative topic at hand: Danger.]

It was something else, rather. Her vanishing was something more intentional.

[He knew he didn't have to outright say murderous.]

She won't appreciate me making mention, of course, but I thought you of all people ought to know. No one in our number is sworn to play by the rules, are they?

[He just wanted to have an ordinary in the bait shop when he woke up. He wanted to get everything in line for his little fishing trip with (former) Judge Petrov and let that be what could pass for excitement. It was going to be fine. Good, even. The miasma of Baltimore would follow him in thoughts, as it always did, but everything would go swimmingly other than that.

He highly doubts Frederick Chilton knew that Will thought of this as a day that wouldn't be so bad, saw this as a way to actively destroy a "good" day in Will Graham's life, but, well. It's been done, no going back. And none of that day ruining comes a bit from the prod about Abigail and he being connected. They're connected whether Will wants them to be or not, especially here. He can't do anything about that, end of discussion.]

Something else that is intentional implies a someone else acting intentionally. [If it was Hannibal Lecter, would Freddie have put it on Tattlecrime? Would he go after an imPort first, ever? Would Chilton say that much outright?] Oughtn't I to know who it was, too, Frederick?

[She won't appreciate him making mention, he says, but then goes scant and shy with the details. How to fix that, how to...]

Unless you're suggesting I find out from her.

[suggesting

Not a one of them sworn to play by the rules at all.]

What, can't you do that thing of yours? Or must you be present at the scene of the crime? I'm asking quite honestly. Your tactic of empathy can be so fascinating.

[He was, in fact, more so baiting the bait master.]

She might already know that I've passed along the word. You know how Danger can be, so possessive in her surveillance.

Or, at least, she is with me. If only she were more vigilant with the third party in discussion, well then, this wouldn't even be a topic at hand.

The only thing I do is interpret the evidence. That requires evidence for me to follow. Same as plenty of others in my former line of work.

[And Chilton's doing a damn good job of it. Will's communicator has not been gripped this tightly in quite some time. It is, most likely, better for both of them that Will keeps up the blustery winds of bullshit as opposed to veering off into anything about pure empathy.

Jack Crawford gives him crime scenes, bodies, pictures, all of the physical that can be found. Evidence, plenty of it. Here, Frederick Chilton gives him words. Choice words, the conversation has been nothing but that. Choice words that he reads back through, notices white knuckles, eases up. Going right to his thing, though, Will has to wonder:]

Has Gideon told you why? Did he tell her why, did she pass that along? Do you have a theory about it that you'd like confirmation on?

[Clean up the place, go fishing with someone he's never met in person, carry on an ordinary day. Nothing involved muddling the waters, getting back (or even considering it) into Abel Gideon's head. Fact checking for Frederick Chilton, is that it?]

If you're coming to me for a why, Frederick, the how is extremely helpful.

[Helpful.

Not necessary. Not like it would be with an unknown. But that's the evidence of the past he has to work on, not because he has a thing. Or so he'd argue. Be tempted to argue.]

I have only spoken to Danger. She is, after all, my patient. Gideon had long ago forfeited that opportunity.

[Chilton had theories, of course. He knew intimately well what dark daggers poked into Gideon's paranoid brain -- after all, had not Chilton poised most of them? Gideon, dissociative and homicidal, wasn't a born serial killer. But he had been bred into one.

Chilton could not escape his own guilt, even if he never heard it whisper to him.]

I'm not the messenger. [Arrows and bullets happened to messengers.] Who do you think is going to be blamed, if you go snooping?

[There is so much to say about the idea of opportunity in regards to Chilton and Gideon, things that run through his head but don't quite make it to his fingers. Rehashing the same old shit won't do anybody any good, and Chilton's been through a future where he's sure to have heard an earful or two from Will. If not face-to-face, then through some sort of monitoring process. Better to just let it go for now, to not take every opportunity to whisper that guilt.]

Snooping and fishing are two different things. [Not a messenger, no. Waving a banner pretty loud and clear, though, whether he meant to or not.] I don't see how any blame could be reasonably put on you if fishing goes wrong on my end. I'm not your patient. I'm not your friend. I'm just a guy who's come across you for work a few times. [The one thing that Will hides behind whenever questions get uncomfortable, that right there. How would he know either Chilton or Gideon very well? They've only met for work! He can't know them much just from that, come on now.] I'm not doing you a favor. I'm doing it for me. That's where the blame should go.

[This time.]

Any other bloody shirts to wave in front of my nose while you've got me?

[Bloodhounds.]

Honestly, I doubt Danger would appreciate your specious claim on the difference. She is such a highly efficient mechanism.

[And much too aware of human behavior. After all, when she had come into Chilton's room late at night to inject him, she knew he would succumb before the threat of force. She knew that he would calculate his options and that he understood he could not win that battle.]

But she'll know I tipped you. And I doubt she'll appreciate your logic, mind, I'm saying this right after I called her highly efficient -- but she is prone to biased emotions. And she is not pleased with me overall.

[Perhaps he had said too much, again, he thought after having sent that text. But it was self-explanatory, wasn't it? He knew that Will could make the argument on how any given person could be none too pleased with Chilton, overall.]

No other scents to hound. I'll give you a whistle if I change my mind, however.

IC contact [Mask or Menace]

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