Disclaimer: I don't own Hannibal, but all original characters are mine.
This is a rewrite of something that I wasn't happy with. Hopefully this time it will turn out better. It will eventually cross over with ITV's Whitechapel. This fic begins with Episode 5 of Season 1 and will go from there.
I've "cast" Felicity Jones as Caitlin Greer. This was originally inspired by the Someone Save Will Graham meme. Caitlin is not a love interest for either Will or Hannibal.
There is a playlist for this, and I'll post some of the songs now and then.
Songs from the playlist:
Intro, Dead Man's Bones (they're a band, and I borrowed their name for the title)
Tonight, Tonight, Smashing Pumpkins
Hotel California, The Killers
The Mummers' Dance, Loreena McKennitt
42, Coldplay
Play On, Paloma Faith
Dead Hearts, Stars
The Lighthouse, The Hush Sound
Cemetaries of London,Coldplay
The Police and the Private, Metric
La Petite Mort, Coeur de Pirate
A Handsome Stranger Called Death, FOE
Skin, Zola Jesus
Another Girl's Paradise, Tori Amos
Blinding, Florence + the Machine
Games People Play, Lissie
I'm Not Calling You a Liar, Florence + the Machine
Burn, The Cure
The Pale Woman
I spoke to the pale and heavy-lidded woman, and said:
O pale and heavy-lidded woman, why is your cheek
Pale as the dead, and what are your eyes afraid lest they speak?
And the woman answered me: I am pale as the dead,
For the dead have loved me, and I dream of the dead.
But I see in the eyes of the living, as a living fire,
The thing that my soul in triumph tells me I have forgot;
And therefore mine eyelids are heavy, and I raise them not,
For always I see in the eyes of men the old desire,
And I fear lest they see that I desire their desire.
-Arthur Symons
Dead Man's Bones
Chapter One
"What does she do again?" Will Graham asked Jack Crawford as they made their way down the quiet hallway.
Jack glanced at him with an impassive smile on his face. "In terms of what—her 'super power' or what she does for a living?"
"What she does for a living. Why is she here?"
"She's building an archive," Jack explained succinctly. "She's a researcher and an archivist."
"I know about the murder archive," Will said impatiently. "Another addition to your Evil Minds Museum, right?"
Jack pointedly ignored the surliness in Will's tone, which rankled Will a little bit. ack stopped midstride, turning to Will. "You're familiar with some of the crimes the police in London have been dealing with, haven't you? The copycat murders?"
"The Jack the Ripper copycat in 2008?"
"And the Ratliff Highway murder and Thames torso murder copycats from 2011."
"So there are a few killers lacking in originality. What does that have to do with us?" Will demanded.
"Hannibal Lecter consulted in the Thames torso copycat case." Jack continued down the hallway. "He remarked on the murder archive some consultant—a Ripperologist—had started at Scotland Yard. I thought we should have the same thing here at the BAU. So we stole one of the archivists working with our old files at the National Archives..."
"Who has a super power," Will added ironically.
"You're just nervous she might make you obsolete."
"I would be exhilarated if she made me obsolete. Can she handle the things I see? Or will her thinking shut down, too?"
"She's not a profiler, Will," Jack reminded him.
"Whatever else she does, then. Is that going to render me obsolete and get me back to the classroom?"
"Will, you'll never be obsolete to me." Jack's tone was gently mocking, though his face was serious. "Let's just say you'll be able to combine notes with her. You'll complement each other, like peas and carrots."
"I'm not Forrest Gump, Jack. So really, stupid is as stupid does."
Jack laughed. "Well, it's nice to know you're on your best behavior today, Will. She'll be thrilled to be working with you."
"She'll be thrilled for both of us, I'm sure."
"You'll like Caitlin. Trust me on this."
"I'll keep an open mind," Will promised, though he wasn't sure that he could keep it as they stepped into the cool, temperature-controlled room that Jack had commandeered for the archive. It was quiet here, blissfully quiet except for the faint sound of shuffling papers and the creak of someone stepping onto one of those stepstools used in libraries. Jack led Will to the back of the room and behind a shelf. The woman seated on the stepstool had her Ipod earbuds in her ears and was absorbed in reading a file.
"Caitlin," Jack said loudly, and the woman started with a gasp, almost dropping the file. She stood up, pulling the earbuds from her ears and setting the file folder aside.
"Jack." She took her Ipod Touch out of the pocket of her cardigan and turned it off, then disconnected the earbuds from it, dropping them both back into the pocket. "You're early," she remarked as she surveyed Will casually. And then she seemed to be looking at something beyond him. She blinked twice, a puzzled look crossing her face before she collected herself. "All thr—er, the both of you."
She'd looked beyond him. Had she tried to avoid eye contact just as he was doing?
"Will has a class in about half an hour. We got out of our meeting early and decided to come down here. Will Graham, this is Caitlin Greer. She's putting together the BAU murder archive."
She stepped forward, smiling, extending her hand. She was trying to made eye contact now. "It's nice to finally meet you," she said. "Jack has told me about what you can do...how you use your ability to empathize to profile killers. It's nothing short of amazing."
Will shook her hand briefly. "So you haven't read what Freddie Lounds has written about me, then?"
She chuckled. "What Freddie Lounds writes is comparable to the crime journals of the Victorian era. Actually, those are a few steps up."
So Caitlin Greer didn't have a very high opinion of Freddie Lounds, either.
"I thought you two would bond over a mutual hatred of Freddie Lounds," Jack said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
"But is she as bad as Dr. Bloom says she is, Jack?" Caitlin said, her elfin face alight with amusement. "Is she really the worst?"
"I think everyone has a different opinion on that," Jack replied, glancing over at Will. "But Will here thinks she's what you'd call the worst."
Dr. Bloom. How did she know Alana?
"Let's give Will a look at this archive," Jack suggested, gesturing that Caitlin should lead. The young woman's hazel eyes lit up excitedly, and she led both Will and Jack to the shelves that looked like they had been finished.
"This is all British murders. All of the files here are copied straight from the murder archive located at the Metropolitan Police headquarters in London. They've been categorized according to how Edward Buchan has it organized there." She turned to Will. "I just finished Japanese and I'm now on American. Once this is finished, the entire BAU will have access to it for reference. Jack has asked me to stay behind and run it. I'd maintain it and coodinate access to the files. The eventual goal is to get everything electronically archived. So say you're in Florida to help out with a case and you need to take a look at a certain file, you'll be able to access it from the local FBI headquarters." She cast a weary glance at the rest of the files. "Eventually."
"But we already have archives of our old cases," Will told her. "Don't those make your archive a little redundant?"
"Not really. London Metropolitan Police has all kinds of archives, but this is more of a specific archive. This was designed by a crime historian. So you're not only getting police information, but contemporaneous information from newspapers and other media." Caitlin reached into the side pocket of her oversized black cardigan and produced a tube of tinted lip balm and reapplied it to her lips.
She reminded him of Rachel Weisz's character in The Mummy.. He could only imagine her coming with them to investigate cases, and when asked by local police what she did, she would say, "I'm an archivist!" with the same amount of pride that Rachel Weisz had told Brenda Fraser that she was a librarian.
"It's basically a special collection," Jack explained to Will. "Meant only for the BAU. It's just another perspective, like what you do is another perspective. Hannibal Lecter saw this when he was in London and mentioned it to Alana Bloom because he was so impressed with it. I'd read about it and decided to make it happen just before we pulled you from the classroom."
"Yeah. What Jack said." She screwed the cap back onto the tinted lip balm and put it back into her pocket. How much crap did she carry in her pockets? "My office is right here. It's not big and swanky like Jack's, but I have an electric tea kettle if you're ever in the mood for a cuppa." She clapped her hand over her mouth, suppressing a laugh. "I mean, cup of tea. My dad's British, and sometimes I forget not to say things in the way he would..."
Her office was about the size of his, maybe a little smaller, but with more shelf space, and she had made use of all of it, with some books related to her field on some of them and of course Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. But the oddest, of course, were the books beside her desk, the ones on what seemed to be Victorian crime, and one book on William James's investigations into spiritualism. Two on Jack the Ripper, one called London's Shadows. Then there were the pictures of family and friends, things everyone else but himself—and Hannibal Lecter—had in their offices. A framed print of a film poster from Way Down East hung on one wall, while one of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night hung on the other. There was a printed picture of Grumpy Cat from the computer pinned into the corkboard by the door.
And of course there was the shiny, chrome-colored electric tea kettle.
It certainly looked like a librarian's office.
At the FBI.
In the BAU of all places.
"Do you want some tea? I have double bergamot Earl Grey or ginger green tea or..." She stopped all of a sudden, straightening slowly, as though she were listening to someone speaking urgently. Her brow wrinkled, and she bit her lips as though she wanted to say something but dared not to when other people were present.
"Caitlin? Everything okay?" Jack asked, touching her on the shoulder gently. She whirled to face Jack, a visible expression of agitation on her face. She looked as though she was about to cry.
"Yeah, Jack. I'm fine. I'm just..." Her voice trailed off. She wiped at her eyes, and then Jack's phone ringer went off.
"I need to take this," Jack told Will and Caitlin. "Excuse me." Jack made his way out of the tiny office, leaving Will alone with Caitlin.
This left Will at a loss. He wanted to just leave, to go back to his lecture hall, shuffle some papers around, talk at his students for a few hours, and then be left in peace.
But he knew that he couldn't just leave. He'd have to face Caitlin Greer after that, and he didn't really want to start off on the wrong foot with her. He picked up the electric tea kettle.
"I've got to leave in a few minutes, but if you want some tea I can at least heat the water for you. We'll have to have that cuppa some other time."
Will glanced at Caitlin, who seemed to be staring not at him, but beyond him, and she tossed her head, blinked, and then looked at him apologetically.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't know what came over me. Sometimes I...Well, you probably have moments like that, too."
"Sometimes," he admitted with a grimace. He went into the nearest kitchen for some water, then returned to Caitlin's office, where she now sat in her desk chair, her face pale.
"Here," she said, getting up after watching him struggle with turning on the electric tea kettle. "I'll do it. You don't need to. I'll show you how another time."
"You're okay, though?"
"I'm fine."
"You're sure?"
"Positive." She stepped away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. She regarded him oddly, tilting her head to the side, almost seeming to deliberate as to whether or not she should say something more to him.
"An albatross," she said. "You've got an albatross around your neck, like the ancient mariner."
"Excuse me?" Will said, taken aback.
"You know—an albatross. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner killed the albatross, which his crew believed to be a sign of good luck, and the rest of the crew was so pissed at him that they made him wear it around his neck." She toyed with the dainty amber pendant around her neck.
"I know about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Will said, retreating back into the defenses he had built for himself once again. "But why are you telling me I've got an albatross around my neck?"
She sighed, pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. "It's guilt. You're carrying a lot of guilt with you."
"Guilt?" Will demanded, the edge returning to his voice. "And how'd you figure that out? Are you trying out the great profiling skills you got from being an armchair crime historian on me just to see how they work?"
"No. Will, that's not it at all."
"Well, how did you come to that conclusion, then?"
She inhaled deeply, as though she was steeling herself. "Because he's standing right behind you."
"But there's no one..." he began, checking over his shoulder just to make sure he was right. "There's no one there."
He felt a sudden chill breeze, as though someone had walked right past him. But there was no one there.
And then, as though they had been pushed, four or five of Caitlin's books toppled off of the bookshelf and onto the floor. Caitlin gasped. "Oh, fuck, Will, you just pissed him off. You might...Mary! Mary! That's enough! You don't need to repeat it...I think he gets it."
"You think who gets it?" Will queried.
"Not you! Mary, knock it off! Just stop!" Caitlin pointed at something beside the bookshelf, something Will couldn't see, though the books shuffled across the floor on their own as though some unseen person had kicked at them.
He felt cold. All of the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end.
"Did I just see that? Did those books just move on their own?"
"Not on their own." Caitlin sighed, closing her eyes. "The ghost of Garrett Jacob Hobbs—the albatross around your neck—is the one who moved them."
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