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Did I -- oh, no, oh no. I had tried to, earlier, by crashing a helicopter into him.

It did not work then. I held no delusions of grander the second time around.

[A pause.

Will Graham does not ask about what is or is not appropriate. Will Graham laughs, high and merry, amazed at the image this conjures in his head.]

You...a helicopter? Holy shit. [His eyes are wide, a moment of awe. Just a moment. Relish it.] Holy shit. Then, then how did you come out of it?

[Evasively:] Well, the helicopter became his priority. He took care of it more than I had.

[The glee dies down to a simple smile, a twinkle in his eyes. He settles back in the chair and gestures outward with interlaced fingers.

Go on, Frederick. He wants to hear the rest. All of it. As much as will be shared. He's listening.]

I escaped him. [Chilton said, slowly, sensing that Will wasn't satisfied.] Trekked to Daenerys' safehouse. And he had stalked me all the while, prowling in wait until he burned her fort to ashes with an army of Soldats.

[One finger moves in slow circles, runs over the end of the rest, runs back up, stops at the precise moment his face betrays he's reached a Conclusion.]

Does she know?

[Is he going to be avoiding her now, he wonders.]

I haven't spoken with her since, so I can't say if she does.

[Will nods. Then he's quiet a bit more, lips pursing before he licks them. Tasting words he doesn't quite like before he lets them go. It tastes like char, and char always tastes like betrayal.]

Were you caught in the flames?

No, no, nothing like that. I had made a quick exit.

[A lucid dreamer with little loyalty to a false land.]

Right back to this world. Catching Rincewind in his depraved deceit turned the tide into something of a whirlpool, I wasn't about to drown.

[Depraved deceit. Jesus Christ. Those are not how Will would describe Rincewind at all, unless it came to, like, lying about just how much glitter he had in his shopping bag. Glitter that he'd find later, in carpets and sheets and clothing. In dog fur. In his own hair. But.

Chilton clearly did a Smart, and Rincewind clearly did a Not So Smart. There's something further than that, though, something more tense. He has to navigate this carefully. Like being blindfolded on a tightrope ten stories up.]

He likes you, you know. He likes you a lot. [That isn't scold, attempt to shame or entice guilt. No. Simple, quiet reminder that Rincewind is a pal. Aren't sins overlooked better for buds?] He asked me about Dorian. Asked if I even considered you a friend. I said yes and he told me that you aren't supposed to make your friends afraid. That's not the point of it.

[e. rincewind champion of frederick chiltons everywhere]

He had made friends with suspect people. [Replied Chilton, his tone notably arch. While Rincewind did so for the sake of survival amidst an unforgiving dreamscape, and while the friend in question was just Jorah Mormont (conceivably not a frightening man to those who considered him a friend), Chilton's judgement withstood the argument like a stubborn stone clashing against more skeptical rains.

Such was Frederick Chilton's reactive insecurity.]

But he does feel badly about it.

[And there it was -- the crack in the stone. Sentimental relenting.]

He's made a habit of that.

[Both those thats, really — friendly with suspect folks and feeling badly about things. But Will leaves it vague, the twist of lips giving away nothing. Despite all their appearances, Frederick Chilton and Will Graham were suspect people, even if only they and handful of others, past and present, knew it. Will more than his once psychiatrist, really; Will could harvest a man's organs, clean off, then go about his day without a soul being any the wiser. Chilton...he could possibly get there someday. And God save Will Graham if that ever happened.]

I woke up... [He looks off as though he has to actively think about it, as though the topic change is answering an earlier question about what he had to eat for dinner three nights before, and now he's finally remembering.] ...Sam was a very angry bull. I'd, uh, provoked him.

[Subconsciously, a hand comes up to gently rub over his chest, a gesture common with heartburn or feeling the heat or being crushed beneath angry bull hooves.]

Not my best idea.

[Chilton can put two and two together because hoo buddy Will has had a lot of bad fucking ideas and they both know it.]

You and Sam... [Chilton eased off the meat of the phrasing, his teeth sought the marrow. Will and Sam had a fight, likely a brutal one. Will had been the agitator.

Chilton swallowed, trying hard to restrain his hunger for the detail.]

Oh, Will. What have you done?

[It wasn't rhetorical.]

[Will appreciates the restraint. Appreciates it so much, he figures maybe he hasn't talked more than he needs to already. Maybe Chilton deserves answers all at once, rather than doling them out like some sort of truth rations.

He keeps his eyes up, body relaxed.]

I killed Sookie first. Wanted to really get his attention. Bit off more than I could chew, he came out the victor.

[If anyone could be considered victorious in that mess. Will nods, lips twisting like he's tasting something quite sour.]

Didn't realize it then. Everything was so distorted. But I, uh. Felt like him. Felt like I was who he'd always wanted me to be. Closer to it, anyway.

[There's only one him in Baltimore.]

[He looked at Will in a way that he had not looked at him for a long, long while now; eyebrows drawn together, mouth a sharp line that dipped down only in the corners of his mouth. Focused, unrelenting, curious.

The last time Chilton peered into Will like that, he had been under the impression that he had the Chesapeake Ripper in his hospital.]

Why did you kill her?

[Context, context. Motivation meant so much to him.]

[Up goes the chin, his eyes narrow. It's rather instinctive. He knows that look so Chilton gets the first sign of rising walls in return.]

I needed his attention. If I didn't have it, he could...turn into a condor and all that time spent tracking him down would be wasted. [Simple, really, an old, tired way of doing things that still proved effective. Like taking a shower to get clean, only with more blood involved.] And I liked killing.

[Masterful use of the past tense.]

Liked.

[Observed use of the past tense. Chilton tilted his head a few degrees to the left, his eyes still on Will.]

You succeeded. You got his attention. You made someone powerful obsess over you.

Again.

[A parallel to Will's role with Hannibal, except the positioning had been exchanged. But Will Graham wasn't Hannibal, even if the geometry forked similar angles -- he was still more feral, still more chaotic.]

[Are you jealous, Frederick? Don't be jealous. There are downsides.]

And I died because of it. Again. [He never would have ended up on that bluff with that idea in his head if not for Hannibal's refusal to leave him alone. Still, curiously, Will has to add...] You think Sam's as powerful as Hannibal?

Oh, no, no. Not yet. [It would take a significant amount of refinement.] But I cannot say I see him necessarily in Hannibal's role.

So he murdered you?

It was in self-defense.

[Super casually admitting if Sam hadn't gotten the upper horn, Will would have eagerly bitten his throat out. That's how they're rolling today. Will goes so far as to bring his fingers up, laced midair. It lends him a more cultured air...]

How often do you see me as him? Generally speaking.

[Does he hear Hannibal's voice come out of Will's mouth? In dreams or awake? He wonders.]

Before today? Not very often at all. I drew a definitive line the moment I was convinced of Hannibal's true identity.

[Chilton had been the first to believe Will, the first to see the logic of his argument. They were akin to blood brothers, brutalized and humiliated by the same man -- yet triumphant. Somehow, triumphant.

That's how he saw it, anyway.]

This is something of a revelation, Will.

[He blinks. His chest rises, falls, a deep breath that doesn't have any real sound accompanying it.]

You know, best of all, what I'm capable of when I need to be. That morality and ethics can be pushed aside when they'll only get in the way. Hannibal made a massacre of Verger farms to save my life, and I came back to him of my own accord. I am not an innocent man. My hands are soaked in blood.

[He swallows, eyes never leaving Chilton as he speaks. He wants to see how the raw and blunt hits him.]

This isn't a revelation for you, Frederick. You're smarter than that. This is confirmation.

[That given the right wrong pushes, and the means, and the motivation, Will can be a batshit nutter butter MURDER MAN. Until he comes to his senses, if ever, at any rate. Gonna have to test that tolerate meter before it can really really turn into an enjoyment bar.]

[Chilton dipped his chin towards his chest, his eyes clear and knowing. Hannibal had sunk deeply into Will -- Hannibal himself had marked his territory and intention to Chilton, even if the full brunt of his meaning was only transparent well after the fact.

All that parallel between Abel Gideon and Will, Chilton and Hannibal, Will and Hannibal. All that mirroring, all that mimicry, all that blood that soaked into foreign veins.]

You have boundaries you will not cross.

[It was not a statement of fact. It was a plea.

Chilton wanted to be that boundary.]

[Silence. The twitch of an eyebrow. Then both knitting together, lines appearing near his eyes, his cheeks, lips twisted and teeth showing enough that the very idea of really harming Frederick Chilton* for any reason that was not to save his own life or April's was entirely horrible a taste.]

Yes. Hannibal has boundaries. [Not a reassuring statement he realizes, and his face gives that away as well.] Different. We have different boundaries. For the most part.

[*the very idea of really harming Frederick Chilton here in this world is one Will does not like to consider, mystery gifts being non-lethal as they were.]

You would not do what he has done to you -- not in your current state, your relevant circumstance.

[Chilton had to quickly amend his statement, knowing full well that everything Will had done in that nightmare landscape came from something within him, something dark and gnawing. Memory directed behavior, but even memory had to be experienced through some vessel of personality.]

And the fact that you will not deny it is promising. Uplifting, even.

[He swallowed.]

Reassuring.

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