Chapter Text
As with most days, Will woke up with a headache.
His towel was once again sweaty beneath him. His phone once again ringing with three missed calls from Jack trying to rouse him from the few hours of sleep he had managed to wrestle into. His head once again swimming in hardly forgotten nightmares.
Something had to give.
He just didn’t know that the thing to give would be The Ripper. Again.
“Yes Jack, I heard you the first time. Yes I’m on my — Yes yes I know this means a new sounder.” Will rolled his eyes. Jack loved to remind him of the Ripper’s MO, as if Will wasn’t the one that created the killer’s profile in the first place. Will slapped some cream cheese on a bagel, grabbed his thermos of black coffee, and hopped in his car. Once the GPS began calling the instructions Will allowed his eyes to unfocus and his mind to drift.
Darkness attempted to grab his wits again, but he shoved it back, entirely too tired to care who was killing who at this point. The fruit tree Alana had given him was dying again, he might as well dwell on that. Will was fine. He was always fine.
Maybe if he kept telling himself that eventually it would come true.
Once arrived he placed his faux glasses on, hoping to block out some of the stares he always seemed to receive. Jack jogged up to him, manifesting an involuntary roll of his shoulders in an attempt to release the mounting tension held within the muscles there.
“It’s definitely him again. The Ripper has begun killing again, this one is—“
“Good morning to you too Jack,” Will shoved the glasses up his nose only because he knew their presence seemed to get under the guy’s skin. In response his boss ground his teeth.
“As I was saying,” Jack began again as he shepherded Will toward the corpse. Will tuned him out, instead opting to pull his jacket tighter. Fresh snow blanketed the ground from last night’s small storm. Will wished he’d opted for sunglasses as the light painfully reflected from the starkly white ground. Though it paled in comparison to the body that was displayed before him.
Her eyes were closed, frost dripping from her discolored eyelids and lashes. The illusion being a permanent state of tears cascading down her powdery face. Her arms were outstretched in a cross style posture, reminding Will of the Christian Jesus. Bent at the elbow toward the trail that the hiker’s had found her on.
An inviting gesture. Inviting someone to come closer in an illusion of warmth. The Ripper did love their irony.
Will suppressed his chuckle at the outline in the snow still left from where one of the hikers had passed out from the shock of their gruesome discovery. Rude, Will thought.
From her arms and fingers hung shards of glass and mirrors, delicately swaying in the breeze that was nipping Will’s ears. The glass tinkled and cast rays of the burning sun erratically around the snow.
The most noticeable mirror being the one that was snuggly placed inside her entire torso cavity. He leaned toward it, resisting the urge to run his fingers across the ribs that kept the mirror in perfect place. She must have been quite a healthy young lady for the killer to take so many of her organs.
“What is the bastard trying to say now Graham ?” Jack half yelled in his ear. Will flinched at the sudden voice and quickly put his glasses back on, not sure when he’d even taken them off.
“You’ve been here longer than I have Jack,”
Jack raised an eyebrow, “I haven’t been staring at it for 45 minutes though, now have I?”
Will swallowed. He hadn’t realized he had been under the influence (as Will had begun to call it) that long, but now he noticed the tips of his ears and nose burning from the cold.
“They’re inviting us to look closer,” Will shoved his glasses up again, more to fidget then to annoy, “look closer at ourselves,”
“Why would they want that?”
“Why does the Ripper do anything? To make fun of us and sate their inherent need to perform,” Will began in a more hushed tone, “they won’t get caught until they want to get caught Jack. We’re out of our league here,”
Jack’s jaw ticked as he bellowed orders at some trainees, which he was always prone to do once aggrieved. The Ripper always aggrieved him.
“You seem proud of this monster and his inability to be outsmarted,” Jack hissed. Will felt the breath escape from his puffed up chest. He’d forgotten to conceal his excitement. Whoops
“Not proud or happy Jack, just fascinated. Believe me I’d much rather they be in a box to be studied then out in the wild hunting like a vicious creature,” Will lied. Part of the enjoyment of the Ripper was they were uncatchable. They handed out death as if they were Death themselves. Sometimes Will wondered…
Will licked his dry lips at the same moment a camera flashed to his right. He groaned as a shock of red curls made their bouncy getaway from the crime scene tape.
For the love of God he just prayed she didn’t make another Murder Husbands article, less the Ripper decide to file a divorce in the near future.
*********
Hannibal ushered Franklyn out from his office, promising another session next week, withholding the fact that the subject would be the patient’s referral. Franklyn was far too rude and not even close to interesting enough to make up for it for Hannibal to keep entertaining him. Recently, Franklyn had even tried his hand at stalking his psychiatrist. A rather pathetic attempt.
As the door clicked shut Hannibal dropped his smile. His face cracked and slipped, revealing his true feelings that usually stayed plastered behind a mask. Before his next patient he had approximately 30 minutes to relax and then rezip his person suit back up.
His laptop whirred to life. The newest tableau was slowly becoming one of his favorites, and he was itching to see if a certain someone had reacted to it yet.
Tattle Crime’s website assaulted his eyes with vibrant colors and horrifying, ugly fonts. He pursed his lips but read on in search of a specific coverage. A sharp intake of breath.
“You seem to be liking them more and more,” Hannibal smiled wolfishly at the picture of Will Graham observing his latest piece. One picture the man was even licking his lips while observing the woman’s bleached ribs.
At first he hadn’t given the agent much more thought than anyone else investigating his extracurricular activities. Graham’s statements to the public were bland and generic, the way he delivered his lines even more boring. Then Freddie had released a recording of William speaking with Jack on her little website. Hannibal still wasn’t sure how she’d gotten it, but he was grateful to her all the same.
“Jack this can hardly be considered murder anymore , I mean it’s art. The curve of the spines, placing of the severed limbs and organs, their expressions, the elements they’re placed in. I mean they carved a bone into an elk. An elk Jack. That is some freaky ass shit and it’s enough to make any profiler bust a damn nu—“
Twenty uninterrupted minutes of dear Will going on about his work. Hannibal’s lips curved at the memory. He really wanted to arrange a meeting with such an avid fan.
At that moment his phone buzzed. Usually the contact name would elicit an eye roll and sigh, but this time Hannibal had to school the glee from his tone by clearing his throat.
“Dr. Lecter speaking,”
“Lecter, it’s Jack. I know you’ve mentioned your patient load is too big to help with any cases right now, but we could really use some—“ Jack took a moment to take a large breath, like he was having trouble saying the word, “help with the Ripper case,”
Fortunately, Hannibal was feeling extra helpful as of late