The ceiling that was not his own, the one he was currently standing under, was dripping. Will found himself on his hands and knees in a pool of blood as it flowed out into an enormous puddle, one that spanned across an unfamiliar hardwood floor. It traveled from under a bed to the center of the room in a rush. It pooled in a crimson circle like a wet fathomless pit, each drip from the ceiling making it ripple.

A woman he had never met before was underneath Will, smiling up at him. She had a permanent expression carved into her once pretty face. Her Glasgow Smile was a jagged slash drawn all the way from her mouth's corners to her ears. She choked beneath him, trying to sputter out something as she drowned in her own blood. Her mouth and throat were being flooded from her facial wounds. It didn't take much longer for her to die.

Will's heartbeat crash wildly against his ribs as his thoughts tried to outrace his rabbit heart.

"What am I doing? Where am I?" Will heard himself grind out as he stared down at the hooked knife in hand, the one he had no memory of owning. "Did I do this?" Horrified and confused, Will scuttled away from the body. He tried to stand up too quickly, slipped, and ended up grabbing for the bed to keep himself from falling into the now silent corpse and her tranquil sea of red. His grip left behind a bright smear on the bed.

Will can feel himself going into shock. He's starting to drown in his own confusion as he stared down at the blood, the body, the knife he's still clutching in his hand, and his own bright handprint on the bed.

Will's ears were beginning to ring, his breathing becoming shallower and quicker. He was getting lightheaded and dizzy. If he didn't leave right now he was going to pass out from being so overwhelmed. He never made it to the door, made to stop as reality firmly reasserted itself. Will became suddenly aware that someone was holding him tightly while they repeated his name over and over again to him. The voice was familiar and soothing. He was let go so that his face was forced up by gently cupped hands. Will was made to stare into the very much alive eyes in a lovely unique shade of maroon.

"You are Will Graham. You are in Greenwood, Delaware. You are at a crime scene. It's 11:30 in the morning. The woman in the floor is Beth LeBeau. You did not kill her though you may think you have." Calm washed over Will, leaving him weak and startled.

"Hannibal?" Will gasped out like he were actually breaking through water's surface to come up for air.

"Yes, very good. Will, I need you to put down the knife before you hurt yourself or me with it." Hannibal said, making Will remember he was still holding the damn thing. It fell from his numb fingers onto the floor with a sharp clatter. Taking off his coat to drape it over Will's now shaking body, Hannibal flung open the door. It made Jack and the team jump back. Will was horrified to find them there, everyone staring at him in his current wrenched state.

"Will?" Beverly tried, bless her, but he just couldn't answer her right now. He could only stare at Beverly with hollow eyes as he struggled to stay upright and conscious. Hannibal somehow managed to refrain himself from picking Will up, something he was grateful for, considering the blow that he had just taken to his pride. Will didn't think he would survive being seen carried around like a baby.

Leaving the team to process the room, Jack followed after them. He watched as Hannibal gently yet thoroughly washed Will's hands for him with warm water and soap. Will was also still aware enough to feel Jack's stare drilling into the side of his head, but chose to watch Hannibal meticulously clean him like only a former surgeon and well experienced serial killer could instead. Hannibal returned the favor for him though, his steely expression making Jack sigh deeply before going out the back kitchen door.

They found Jack staring out into the open fields that surrounded the modest farm house. Will figured they might as well get this unpleasant exchange over with.

"I'm going to ask you a question and

if I think for a moment you're withholding anything from me, I cannot guarantee a calm response." Was Jack's version of growth Will supposed. "What happened in there?"

"I got…confused." Will answered shortly, hoping futilely that Jack would leave it at that.

"I've seen you confused before.

I've seen you upset. I've never seen you afraid like you were." Jack said. Will almost told the man to go fuck himself.

"I'm an old hand at fear. I can

manage this one. I was just disoriented. I can go back in." Will said instead.

"I saw your face when you walked out of that room. What you experienced in there stunned you silent." Apparently, things were finally coming to a head for Jack.

"Really? No shit?" Escaped him before Will could tap down the rest of his budding anger, "I can see and hear better afraid. Just can't speak as concisely." He tried to make light of it.

"You contaminated the crime scene." Jack was relentless. He wanted answers, real ones.

"I thought I was responsible." Will admitted quietly since Jack refused to let this go.

"You thought you killed that woman?" Jack was a very unhappy man.

"Sometimes with what I do --" Will started to say.

"What you do is take whatever

evidence there is and extrapolate. You reconstruct the thinking of a killer, not think you are a killer." Jack was quicker.

"Yes, Jack. Why don't you lecture me again about my own mental process some more? That's always fun. Well, guess what? This is what it looks like when I have my head too tightly wrapped around cases!" Will finally snapped, "You wanna know what happened? I got lost in the reconstruction. Just for a second. Just a blink, but it was enough."

"I know you don't like to be a

subject of concern, but consider me officially concerned." Jack said somberly, his expression darkening as he watched Will's shoulders shake with barely contained laughter.

"Officially?" Will cackled back. "Now? Just now?"

"That's right."

"Thought the reason you have me

not seeing an FBI psychiatrist is so that my mental well-being stays unofficial." Will said, watching as the blow landed like he wanted. He was tired being treated like an idiot.

"Have I broken you?" Jack asked, sincere and worried.

"No. No, you don't get to ask me that. Absolutely not. You don't get to act like you give a damn about me now." Will spat out, "You're either going to keep me in the field and you might get what you want, the Chesapeake Ripper, or you allow me go back to my classroom, leave me the hell alone, and you might never catch him. One life ruined seems like a really good deal in the grand scheme of things so don't bother with whatever the hell this is."

Jack glared at Will, but remained silent. "Yeah, that's what I thought." Will muttered, turning to go back in. Jack and Hannibal followed, neither taking their eyes off of Will's back. He could hear the argument going on behind him though, even when they fell back.

"You knew, from the moment you

walked into his classroom, that you were putting Will in a potentially destructive environment." Hannibal laid into Jack.

"I had eight college girls dead in

Minnesota. He caught their killer." Like that makes everything all right. "I'd rather Will Graham go a little

mad than some innocent lose their life. And I think Will Graham would rather that, too."

There it was, the sentiment spoken to his back instead of to his face.

"Will's an innocent." It was surreal to have such a prominent serial killer defend him in a conversation with the FBI.

"He's an innocent I know is going to

survive. Will is genuine. He'll always come back to being Will." Jack made his excuses.

"Not always. So far." Hannibal corrected.

"Do you think Will is mentally ill?" Jack had the audacity to ask.

"I'm literally right here. I can hear you." Will threw over his shoulder.

"No, he is not, though your cases are not helping in that endeavor." Hannibal spoke like he wasn't a constant source of stress. "What Will has is too many mirror neurons. Our heads are filled with them when we're children. Supposed to help us socialize and melt away. But Will held onto his, which makes knowing who he is a challenge. He's always reflecting those around him."

"Is that what happened today?" Jack asked, "Did Will reflect back too much of the killer on this one?"

"Still here." Will reminded.

"It's a mild form of echopraxia." Hannibal said, "When you take him to a crime scene,Jack, the very air has screams smeared on it. In those places, he doesn't just reflect, he absorbs."

"You mean like how I've explained to everyone over and over again this whole time? Do I need to do so with an accent so it will sink in?" Will fumed, turning on his company, "You know what? Not another damn word about me until we're done here. I'm sick of people speaking about me like I'm not here."

They rejoined the team to find Zeller kneeling over the body as he studied the facial wounds. Beverly stooped next to some claw marks on the floor while Price dusted for prints.

"She drowned on her own blood." Zeller told them.

"What she didn't drown on is all

over the floor and under the bed. She was trying to hide from him." Price said, just as grim.

"She was dragged there. He was

under the bed waiting for her." Will corrected. He appreciated Price's reaction of not automatically arguing with him about it.

"Fought to claw her way out." Beverley said as she worked out a broken fingernail lounged in the wood.

Glancing around the room, Will realized that every framed picture had been smashed. The focus of the violence was placed upon the picture's occupants faces.

"He knew her. Or thought he did.

It's someone who cared about her." Will intoned as he dived back into his own head.

"He cared too much." Beverley said as she matched the fingernail to the body.

"We're already looking at boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, co-workers, the guy who bags her groceries." Jack said.

"I've got one clean set of

fingerprints on the knife handle." Jimmy announced as he looked over at Will. "I assume they're yours."

Will looked away first. "Sorry."

"There's other dermal tissue,

presumably from the killer, but the skin is so diseased or damaged it didn't leave any usable prints." Price continued on thoughtfully.

Beverly studied the dead woman's fingernails. "Victim scratched her killer deep enough to pile tissue under her fingernails, but never drew blood."

"Why doesn't he bleed?" Jack should really be on the normal cases Will decided. He really wasn't cut out for this shit. Dealing with the normal criminal? Jack was golden. The abnormal though? He was a bull in a china shop. Jack was a highly intelligent man, but he was so far out of his depth that he wasted a lot of time and energy to keep from afloat. Will was the proverbial straw Jack was using to keep from drowning.

"Any number of reasons really." Hannibal offered up as he studied the scene.

"After he cut up the victim's face,

it looks like he was trying to pull the skin back." Zeller said as he studied the wounds.

"Like he was removing a mask." Will said, "That makes sense."

"How does any of this make sense?" Zeller asked the question of the day before anyone else.

"This wasn't savage. It was desperate...sad." Will said, making everyone look over at him again as he started shaking again.

"I believe it is time for us to go." Hannibal announced, suddenly reminding Will that he was still wearing Hannibal's coat draped over his shoulders. He didn't have any strength left to care. The team had already seen him compromised. It would be more fodder for whatever Hannibal had planned for him later on, and there was nothing he could do about it now. Will was led to the Bentley, Hannibal taking his hand to do so.

"Do you want your coat back?" Will asked as they exited.

"Keep it for now."

"But you don't like being cold." Will said, actually getting a reaction from Hannibal for once, subtle as it was, his version of a flinch.

"Keep it. I'll survive." Hannibal's mask was back in place.

"You shouldn't have to suffer on my account." Good ole Southern politeness was a force of habit on Will's part sometimes, or so he told himself. He shouldn't allow himself to have any empathy for Hannibal's past trauma, repeated that sentiment back to himself like a prayer.

"If I should suffer anything, it should be by you." Hannibal had the grace to correct that notion.

"I'm not going to argue with that."

"I'm glad we've been able to find something to agree upon."

"I still have the coppery smell of

blood on my hands. I can't remember seeing her dead body before I saw myself killing her." Will said quietly in the car.

"Those memories sank out of sight,

yet you're aware of their absence." Hannibal said, having an odd way of making his words sounds like a statement and a question all at once. Will put it down as more of a therapist thing than a doctor's trait.

"They left a slick on the surface of

my mind where they're supposed to be." Despite the source, Will appreciated that quirk. It gave him an opening to expand on something if he so choose to do so.

"Where you hope they're supposed to be, but fear they never were."

"There's a grandiosity in the

violence I imagined that feels more real than what I know is true."

"What do you know to be true?"

"I know I didn't kill her. Couldn't

have." Will said, "But I remember cutting into her. I remember watching her die, but it wasn't savage. It was so

desperate...sad. The killer was looking for something in her, and they despaired when they couldn't find it."

"Are you still thinking like them?" Hannibal asked, sounding more curious than concerned. Will doubted he'd get that same treatment from the rest of the team now.

"Can't be helped for now." Will sighed, "I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked through me, past me. Like I was a stranger."

"You have to honestly confront your

limitations with what you do and how it affects you."

"You're not my therapist." Will grumped.

"True, but that doesn't make it any less true." Hannibal smiled, the prick.

"If by limitations you mean the

difference between sanity and insanity... I don't accept that." Will said with a determination he felt down to his core.

"What do you accept?"

"That I know what kind of crazy I am," Will said, "Despite your best efforts in the matter."

"You consider what I've done so far my very best?" Hannibal was definitely amused by that.

"That was an observation, not a challenge." Will said quickly, wondering what fresh new Hell he'd brought upon himself.

"There is an unreality that comes from taking a life, of people who die by other's hands. In those moments they're not flesh, but light and air and color." Hannibal said.

"Isn't that what it is to be alive?" Will pointed out, wondering where this was going.

"Do you feel alive, Will?" And there it was.

"I feel like I'm fading." But Will could shadow dance too. Give up a little to get a lot back. He refrained from saying, "It feels like I'm fading into you.". Thought it best to keep that part to himself.

"How does that make you feel?"

"You sound like a therapist."

"Lucky for you, I happen to be one."

"Yes, Franklin is a shining success of your abilities." Will poked.

"He was a lost cause referral I took on as a favor." Hannibal poked back. "Answer the question."

"How do I feel?" Will mused, "I don't really know anymore."

"Why does Tobias still weigh on your mind so heavily?" Hannibal asked, "You didn't kill him."

"I know that," Will shot Hannibal a look. "But I didn't stop you either."

"Why did you allow me to create?"

"Tobias had been operating in Baltimore for years. He supplied strings to the Orchestra. There's around 21 musicians there who need replacement strings often which means there's a whole lot of people who never made it home because of Tobias playing judge, jury, and executioner over their talent. We'll never know his real number, how many people he killed. All that music never allowed to improve, to grow, or be played again." Will spoke his past thoughts about it. "The long and short of it is that he doesn't deserve notice for what he has done. All he deserved was to become a victim, to be judged, and his song ended. He's just something to study now, a mere footnote in your long list of death."

"Until a collector gets their hands on his music. His violin would be worth something to the more unique buyers and fans of the disturbing."

"That won't ever happen." Will told his reflection in the car window.

"You sound very confident about that. May I ask why?"

"While you were downstairs, I kept busy. Part of that was destroying everything he created, took pride in." Will had burned it all.

"Even his music?"

"Especially his music."

"As above, so below." Hannibal couldn't resist referring to himself as a higher power. "You've made me your avenging angel." Hannibal was, of course, delighted by this.

"More like a devil come to collect."