Short Sighted: (by timydamonkey)
Summary: So there he was: a mastermind criminal profiler, who couldn't see the truth in front of his own face. Caught in Hannibal's web of lies, Will reflects.
Author's Note: This is set after the first season finale. It may be inaccurate in places though I've tried my best, on account of the fact I live in the UK so haven't actually seen said finale yet as we're a whole bunch of weeks behind (I've got by using recaps and piecing it together with what I've seen).
I'm still getting a feel for the characters. I'm not quite sure I've found Will's voice yet, but this is my first attempt at getting into his head.
Shut away, Will felt clarity for the first time in what felt like months. Naturally, it had come far too late. He could step back and blame the encephalitis, but he knew that wasn't everything. It was a big part: but his own wilful ignorance was part of it too.
Jack Crawford pulled him to crime scenes, like a dog on a leash, releasing him when it was necessary and half-heartedly pulling him back when he wasn't needed. He'd watched him out of the side of his eyes; perhaps he knew that if he looked Will in the face, he might see some sort of madness there. So he'd averted his eyes from his discomfort and assigned Doctor Lecter, for his own peace of mind.
For his part, Will both hated and needed the crime scenes. It was awful to walk in, time after time, to scenes with such violence, then to reconstruct exactly what led to that body being there… to lose himself in the mind of a killer, even for just a moment, and to feel for that instant why they'd had to die and believe it… until out he stepped. (Sometimes, he'd wondered whether he'd truly managed to step back from such minds without any lasting effects. Hobbs, in particular, seemed to linger in his thoughts. It was a far better idea than that this was him.) Yet he helped people, and there was some level of fascination in viewing these scenes, in the scramble of his mind to put the pieces together.
He'd talked out the pieces in Lecter's office, sticking them on the canvas and finding missing pieces, much to his frustration. He'd liked it, because it helped to keep his mind straight and often Lecter had some calm, interested way of questioning that helped him make realisations.
(He hadn't always needed such help to come to his conclusions, but the encephalitis had impaired his thinking ability. It was hard to solve crimes when you didn't know if you were coming or going, awake or asleep, living or dying.)
Here, he'd thought, here was an intellectual equal. He didn't recoil or judge, despite knowing what Will did, he respected Will's thoughts… and he'd grounded him. When things started going wildly out of control, he'd been Will's first port of call, as much as company than as a psychiatrist – although with reality distorting around him, he'd needed that too. Maybe even as a friend.
He'd actually liked Doctor Lecter. He'd trusted him with the sacred duty of feeding his dogs, and that was a lot for Will. He'd eaten with him (oh God) and generally enjoyed their time together. Had he felt unease, any creeping suspicion? Will didn't think so, but maybe he was being wilfully short sighed. Maybe he didn't want his company taken away. His feelings on the matter were so muddled that even he couldn't figure out what he'd been thinking, or if he'd been thinking at all. So, for a long time, there he was: a mastermind criminal profiler, who couldn't see the truth in front of his own face.
Now he was faced with the stark knowledge that the person who understood him the most, whom he'd thought he'd understood, was a prolific serial killer who'd spun a web of blame around him, and he had no tools to escape with. It wasn't a web that words could fight.
"We've been blind!" he could say. "Hannibal Lecter did it!" And then they'd all exchange looks: yes Will, of course he did, while muttering to each other about his fragmented grip on reality. Of his paranoia. Maybe he'd accuse them next.
He had never been that great with words. What he did, his empathy, it didn't come in words. He just tried to fit them to it, like a mismatched puzzle.
Now he had so much time, and nothing to do but sit and brood. The Ripper, and the Copycat Killer, they're the same and they're not him. They're Lecter. As for Will, sitting innocently in that cell? Perhaps he wasn't that innocent after all. (Abigail… had he killed her? He could see her face in that last moment of his memory, and she looked like she thought he was capable of it. And Will, while a gentle individual, must have had some sort of capacity for violence. He saw so much of it in his mind on a daily basis, reconstructing crimes. It could easily make him capable of it, too. And even if he hadn't been the one to kill her, had he caused it by taking her along with him? Was that guilt always going to be his to own?)
He wished he'd seen it sooner, any clue that Lecter was more than he was pretending to be. He wished he'd kept that healthy suspicion: ugh, psychiatrist. He'd even spotted some oddities on one occasion: "Are you trying to alienate me from Jack Crawford?" he'd asked once incredulously, but when it came down to it he'd written it off as a poor choice of words at the time, an unwanted line of questioning. Maybe he did resent Jack, maybe a bit, for throwing him in the direction of crimes even as he protested about the effects it was having on his mind, but he hadn't wanted to say so.
He'd been so foolish, too, writing it off. In stark contrast to Will, words were a psychiatrist's best weapon, and they knew how to use them. Always. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten that – and Lecter was one of the best, after all, he thought bitterly.
He hadn't truly had a chance to admire his skill with words until he'd caught Will up in lie after lie after lie, but they were plausible lies built on half-truths. People didn't take much convincing either: everybody knew he was unstable, so it was easy to blame him, easy to sidestep any element of the blame that might come to them for putting him there in the first place.
It seemed that if Lecter couldn't alienate him further from his colleagues, he'd alienate them from him. Will almost admired the nerve it took.
He knew that Lecter would come to see him. Some people would gloat, but he couldn't quite see that with Lecter. Then again, had he ever truly known the man? He may be required to recalculate. Yet there was something inexorably drawing them together, and he couldn't see that changing.
After all, Lecter still needed his talking partner too.