A/N: This chapter is, um…interesting. Please read chapter 14 first. I posted two chapters.

Here be dragons.

Chapter 15:

As he drove Sara back to the lab with him, the metronome in the backseat because he knew he was going to need it, he heard her say next to him, "Okay. Run it through like a crime scene recreation. What are you thinking—"

"It's hard to explain what I'm thinking. My thoughts aren't always linear. They're like pinballs; bouncing around, making leaps…"

"Knight's Move Thinking?" He glanced at her with a question in his eyes. Answering it, she said, "My mom's schizophrenic, remember. There's a fragmented thought process they can sometimes exhibit, leaps in thought, intangible phrases that seem disconnected. The clinical term is Knight's Move Thinking. Even if I might not grasp everything, that doesn't mean I won't understand. I might be able to help you connect the dots."

Oh, how he loved this woman. Her intelligence was so damn sexy. Over the years he'd fallen for her many times. The first time was by her beauty when they first met, and then by her intellect, over and over, the more he got to know her. There had been times when he had remained silent, just listening to her, and feeling himself fall deeper and deeper in love.

He marveled at how easily it was for her to be both strong emotionally and mentally to persevere and do the job when at times he couldn't do both at the same time. So, he chose to be strong in the only way that mattered, however, ignoring what he felt had a price. He also ignored people, ignored friends, and made himself alone.

Lecter's voice once again filled his head, drowning out his own, "You know what your problem is, Will? You're too human. You're so inflicted by the external world around you, that it's made you into a man who prefers to live alone. Being too human drives you to extreme introversion. You can't trust people and you fear them because you know all too well what being human means."

There was so much about himself he didn't fully understand and couldn't see, yet there were things he did know. He was stubborn. He was set in his ways, and threw up walls to shut people out. Pushing people away was what he did and has always done. At any moment, he could get up and walk away.

He told Warrick once that when he left there would be no cake in the breakroom, he'd just be gone. He didn't develop relationships, not even friendships. Sure, he was a mentor and his coworkers respected him, and maybe they thought of him as family, but they didn't expect him to attend any birthdays or weddings. Getting a drink after work was always an offer but not expected. And if one day he didn't come into work, they'd move on.

He wondered if his previous marriage was even a real marriage. All he did was push Molly away. Kept them at a distance when things got tough. He'd isolated himself in order to do what he did in finding Dolarhyde.

He didn't want to do the same with Sara. She wouldn't leave anyway. Plus, he already warned her, told her to leave, and she said no. Now, he was left with two options. He could do what he had always done and shut her out. Or, he could let her in.

But by doing so, would he make her feel crazy? She told him to let her worry about it. She wanted to help him carry his burdens because she loved him.

There really was only one thing to do. Clearing his throat, he kept his eyes on the road as he told her, "Lecter said that all he wanted to do was help me. He doesn't help anyone but himself. What he did was manipulate me. Turn my mind against itself. I uh…In my head there is a void of darkness. In that darkness I'm able to recreate dreams, fantasies, and create memories of people. Me, you, others…It's how I am able to empathize with anyone, even serial killers. When Lecter was acting as my therapist, we talked about it…I didn't directly tell him what it was I wanted, but he knew. He heard it anyway. My unspoken desire to have the darkness reach back. I wanted to understand myself, why I am the way I am. I wanted to know what was inside, buried, within my own mind. There was something there, in the dark with me, but, like I said, I have a hard time seeing myself."

Sara was quiet.

He went on, saying, "I went into the dark, and brought something back with me."

"What was it?"

"A monster. One that I created. The…" He took a breath, "Dragon that I had to become in order to stop—"

"Francis Dolarhyde."

He gave a nod. "Yeah." Sara was quiet. "I used to see it."

"You…saw it?"

He gave another nod. "In my head, but also…in reality. I saw it as if it was real. I know it wasn't. I'm not insane—"

"I never said you were."

It still didn't make him feel any better. "It was a manifestation."

"Of what?"

He thought about it for a moment as he stopped at a red light and watched the other cars drive by in front of him. People out on the sidewalks, heading to the casinos or home from work. "I don't know. Before, I thought it was my own fear of being a killer. The monster I became after I killed Dolarhyde. Or, it was my guilt. Now…I honestly have no idea. Hannibal knows."

"Maybe it's nothing at all—"

"It's something, Sara. If it was nothing, it wouldn't have been there. It's always been there. Waiting."

"Okay. Then if you can recreate dreams like you can crime scenes, then can you create a dream where you talk to it? Ask it for yourself."

As Sara spoke, he remembered the conversation he had with Lecter in the hospital: "Are—are you saying you won't kill anyone else if I turn my high-powered perception around and take a good long hard look at myself?"

"Or are you afraid to?"

He nearly laughed, but then realized that Hannibal Lecter was serious. He'd been questioning the 'why' ever since this started. Why now and why him and why here. This was the answer. Lecter was always five steps ahead. Everything he'd been investigating has led him to believing, or rather seeing, what Lecter has been saying to him since they first met.

It was his turn. He never wanted to talk to his Dragon. He was afraid of it, what it had to say. There was a reason he always felt different. Real fear that existed that one day he'd be locked away somewhere.

His head wrinkled in thought as he worked that out. That actually wasn't a bad idea. "I…Maybe. Never tried it."

"How'd you get rid of it?"

"I nearly drank myself to death." His eyes finally found hers and he saw her concern. "I didn't become an alcoholic because I wanted to drink. It was the only thing that got rid of it. As Lecter put it, I drowned it in whiskey."

Not too long after that, they were back at the crime lab, and he felt at home. It was odd that when he was at home that he always felt something was missing. Then when he got to work, into his office, it felt as if that something that had been missing was being fulfilled. Was it the work? His co-workers? Or, had it been the woman he worked with and lost his heart to?

At the moment, he thought it was all three. The work was fulfilling, his co-workers turning more into his family each day, and as for Sara, she was watching him from across the conference table. Her eyes flickering to him, a small smile on his face, knowing look in her eyes.

Greg was talking, saying, "We're certain the vehicle used was a box truck. Archie and I have been tracking a box truck seen in the neighborhood around the time of the abduction. We lost it, but it was heading west on Highway 160 towards the mountains."

It was something to go on. "Anything on Clarice?" he asked Sara. "I told you that Lecter's sister's name was Mischa. Get anything?"

"Not yet," she said as she was re-reading a note Lecter had written to Starling; the one with the Greek god drawing. "Does Lecter think he's God?"

"Lecter isn't God," he told her. "There is no fun being God, but he does think of himself as being God-like, just more powerful. Only someone as equal to God can defy God—"

"He's the Devil?"

He shifted his eyes over to hers and gave a nod. "Worse. He's like smoke and fire. It feeds off the very air we need to live. That's how it grows stronger. Fire feeds on air. Lecter feeds on humans."

"How do you catch something like that?" Nick asked.

"You don't. You have to find it at its source, and then smother it until it can no longer feed itself."

Eyes fell on him as he spoke those words. Again, he felt that feeling, heard the thoughts, and knew that wherever Gil Grissom was, he wasn't in that room. There was a difference, at least in his own mind. Lecter's words entered his head: the mongoose under the house as the snake slithered by. Mongooses were known to kill snakes in atrocious, violent ways. They were also temperamentally unpredictable.

If he could describe Will Graham in a nutshell, it would be temperamentally unpredictable. When he changed his name to Gil, he told himself he'd be less emotional and reckless. That he wouldn't get into the minds of killers and that he would stop trying to empathize and by doing that he had to build up a wall. Well, that wall was down. Broken and shattered to pieces on the ground.

He hadn't known when it happened, maybe when he was talking to Lecter on the phone in the hospital, but ever since then he felt different. His thoughts were different, less cerebral and logical and more…More Will-like.

Despite Will being an entomologist and forensic scientist, he was also a profiler and taught psychoanalysis at Quantico. He knew the inner workings of forensic psychology as well as Hannibal Lecter did. Despite all that, he still didn't get people. Never did. It was a handicap, but one he thought he needed to keep from being too much like them to fall victim to their shortcomings. He understood them with empathy, but remained apart due to the other thing that just didn't get it.

All the evidence was on the white boards and cork boards and walls around the room, scattered on the table, and all of it was permanently implanted in his mind. He went over it and over it, and over it, as his team talked around him, tossing out theories and what for's and why's. They all had questions and they all voiced them out one by one.

Warrick and Greg both asked, "Who is Hannah?" and why was she important enough to Clarice Starling for her to write the name on the wall of a hotel room using her fingerprints.

Sara asked, "Why the Hayashi's?"

Nick asked another question, "Why did they keep Lincoln Fischer alive?"

All were good questions and all needed answers. Clearing his throat, he said, "Warrick, have you heard back from Montana yet?"

"Not yet," Warrick told him. "I think they're dragging their feet."

"Then you and Greg get on the first plane out to Montana. Be their feet for them and find her records. I'll have Brass clear it with the local police." Turning to Nick, he said, "Find out everything you can about Lincoln Fischer and Todd Stevens."

"Todd Stevens? The SunWest Delivery driver they killed?"

"Yeah," he said. "There was a reason, there always is. I'm going to tell Brass to have the DA cut Fischer loose and then follow him. Maybe he'll lead us somewhere."

Sara looked at him expectantly and before he could say anything, said, "I'll look more into the Hayashi's. Brass didn't find anything, but maybe he wasn't looking in the right spot."

He gave a nod and then watched as his team all stood up and left the conference room. Everyone except for Catherine who sat at the other end of the table. She let out a breath as she watched the team head out.

"Since you're no good at politicking, I have a meeting with the Sheriff and AD," she told him. He thought about Ecklie and felt himself groan. "Anything you'd like for me to share? Thoughts on Agent Starling? Why Agent Collins, other than him being your son?"

He tapped his pen on file in front of him as he thought about Lecter and Starling. His thoughts were voiced out loud as he said, "He aches for her daily and feasts upon the very sight of her…She is his nourishment."

Catherine was watching him with concern before asking, "So, the question is: does she ache for him?"

"I don't know." He thought of Sara and felt himself smiled. She ached for him, and he ached for her right back.

"Thinking of Sara?"

He blinked back as he eyed Catherine. She had that look again, the one that told him that she knew. Letting out a breath, he simply said, "Brass."

She smirked. "If you want to keep something a secret, Gil, don't tell Jim."

"Yeah," he said mostly to himself as Catherine got up and left the room.

That left him alone; exactly where he wanted to be. He had things to think about, like the fact that in order to find Hannibal Lecter, he had to, in a sense, smell himself. He had to see Will Graham.

That meant his question was: who are you?

Other than who he was right now, he had no idea what was hidden inside his own shadow. Lecter knew. Lecter had poked and studied him like a monster caught in a cage. He did it in a very cunning and conniving way, as his therapist. Lecter knew him better than he knew himself. Somewhere in the past he had told him. He'd seen what was lying underneath. Lecter saw his fantasy. He knew his dreams.

He shook his head in confusion. He didn't have a fantasy. At least, he didn't think he did. If he'd told Lecter anything about himself, then it had been during their therapy sessions. In order to find the answers, then that was where he needed to go.

And to do that he needed to be alone. In a quiet room with only the metronome to keep him from falling too far into the dark. He didn't want to get lost and not find his way back out again. The last time that happened, he wound up in a psych ward.

Getting up, he headed to the breakroom first and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, got a bottle of water out of the community fridge, and then went to his office and shut the door. He drew the blinds and then grabbed the metronome out of his desk drawer. He placed the metronome on the table as he sat on the sofa against the far wall. Then, he flicked the metronome to get it ticking back and forth before lying down as he stared up at the ceiling.

As the ticking grew less intrusive and more like white noise, a dark void started to creep into the space around him until the cluttered shelves and walls that filled his office disappeared. Into his mind, he drifted.

Into the past, and into his darkness he fell.

Tap…

He opened his eyes into the void and stood as still as the air around him.

…tap…

Then he took a step, and then another, and this time he wasn't watching himself walk into the void, he was present in his own body as the ticking faded away the further into the darkness he went until he could no longer hear it. As he walked, a light appeared in the dark. Desk lamp, cira 1940's. Doctor Lecter's office appeared around him, the walls of books, mid-century modern furniture, Louis XV Gilded armchair with velvet upholstery behind the desk. Leather chairs for the patient and doctor to sit facing each other.

Sitting down in the chair, he waited for Doctor Lecter to speak. He was watching him, a sly smile on his face. Fascinated by his answer before asking, "Do you have any recurring nightmares? A dream—"

"I don't remember my dreams."

That interested him. "None? Not ever?"

He shook his head. "The only dreams I remember belong to other people. Not my own."

"Are you sure that they're other people's and not your own?"

He was confused, but he did think about it. It worried him that he didn't know the answer. When he empathized, and felt what others felt, it was hard to figure out his own emotions, his own thoughts and dreams. Had he dreamt dreams that were his but believed were someone else's? He didn't know the answer.

Lecter changed tactics, and asked, "How long did you live in New Orleans?"

That he could answer. "Four years. From the time I was ten until we moved back to L.A. when I was fourteen."

"Tell me a memory about your time there, and don't lie or I'll know."

Why would he lie? Patients probably lied all the time, that was why the warning. He didn't want to be there, so he could have lied just to get the doctor to rubber stamp him. They both knew that wasn't going to happen. He had to be there to keep his job with the FBI. He was unstable, as they put it.

"Will?"

He shrugged. He didn't know.

"You don't remember those four years?"

He shook his head. Something was wrong and they both knew it. No one ever forgot four years of their lives. Yeah, most couldn't remember everything that happened over the course of their life, but they knew they had been somewhere, done some things, and they could recall some memories of their past.

He was an eidetiker. He remembered everything. When thinking about his life, he could recall any time, any place, anybody, in perfect detail. Trying to remember Louisiana, he recalled nothing but darkness. The empty void.

Had that been where he'd learned what he was? How he saw. Did Louisiana, New Orleans, create the darkness where he dreamed?

That was his answer. His memory was—"Darkness. I remember the dark."

Doctor Lecter got very still. It lasted exactly twenty-one beats of the metronome. "In order to venture into the dark, I'm going to try a meditation technique. I want you to do exactly as I say. You are going to breathe in and out, letting the diaphragm easily do its job while relaxing the body. Listen to your breathing. Follow it, let it guide you. Once your body is completely relaxed, then you work on the mind. The beginning of any emotion is always felt physically before you realize it mentally. If you curb your anger in your physical being, you can master it in the mental. The key is controlling your breathing first and foremost. Then your anger."

"Why my anger?"

"Because, Dear Will, isn't it in your rage that you feel like killing?"

Doctor Lecter had a point.

It took some time, but after a while of trying to ease himself into a state of meditation, his breathing eased as his mind continued to drift from the chaotic uncertainties of his life to the vast openness of a desert. The image of the desert was what calmed him. The heat of the sun, the uninhabited dunes of sand, and in the middle of the thousands of miles of desert he stood. The darkness was gone, and in its place sand.

Walking over cool sand despite the sun's hot rays, he searched the horizon with his eyes for something. He never knew what he was searching for, but he always did it. It was there, in the void of his mind and in the vastness of the desert, watching and waiting to reach back. It never did.

Until one day it finally did.

Doctor Lecter's office faded into the dark void as he remembered the time when the figure first appeared in his mind. He thought it had been during the Dolarhyde case, but it hadn't. That was when he saw it outside of his mind and gave it a persona.

However, that wasn't when he first noticed it.

It had been during a therapy session.

Tap…tap…tap…

Something was falling down out of the void above him. Holding out his hand, he saw the grains of sand hitting his palm. All around him, sand was falling. He hated sand. Taking a step, he started walking again, and listening. He could hear it now. It was all around him in the dark.

He couldn't see it. Reaching out, he couldn't touch it.

Dropping his arm, he felt his breathing grow shallower, deeper, as he recreated the first time that he noticed it in a meditative state in a psychiatrist's office. He heard scratching of a pen, murmurs of voices in his head, as the darkness lifted, he was standing in a doctor's office. Outside the window were bald cypress, water tupelos and—

This wasn't Doctor Lecter's office. He was in New Orleans. The pen was from the doctor sitting behind a mahogany desk. The room smelt of anesthetic cream. The doctor looked up from writing, looked right at him, and his mouth was moving but he couldn't hear a word.

He felt panicked, scared, as his eyes turned to the woman next to him. His mother. She was signing with her hands. She wanted to know what the doctor was saying. He was her ears, her son, and she trusted him to tell the truth. Always.

Raising his hands, he signed to her. He lied.

The darkness rushed into light, the sun and sand. The panic was still in his chest that ached. It ached so bad he thought he was having a heart attack. In front of him was himself, but so much younger. He was a boy.

Nine or ten years old maybe. And as the boy continued to walk through the desert of his mind, he glanced behind him and saw a figure. An image of a shadow. A darkness in the form of a man. The dark figure never bothered him, never spoke a word, but it started following with pent up rage, breathing heavily and angrily while clenching and unclenching its fists. He could hear its uninhibited rage in his head and feel the anger in his blood.

He used to be scared of the dark shadow that followed him and wanted to run as far away from it as he could. Now as he watched it, he remembered how he tried trapping it a few times by caging it in the desert of his mind, only for it to become too powerful. It would break free every time and become angrier after each attempt to confine it. So he stopped trying to entrap it and decided to accept it and let it be.

And now when he looked back and saw the dark figure following, it reassured him to know it was there. The boy Will knew as long as it was following then he would be safe. He could turn his attention to the desert horizon with the sun beating down on him and search without fear. It was just him, alone in the desert, being followed by the darkness.

Taming the darkness wasn't the secret; accepting it was. The shadow was a part of him. In order to control it he had to control himself. It was his rage, his own anger and hate, and his own subconscious that drove the darkness. Control his body, control his mind, accept the dark, and he could control how it manifested.

They could act as one instead of separate. Him and the monster could both be. Like the Spiderman comics he liked to read, he could be a hero. He could save lives.

He could slay dragons.

…tap…tap…tap…tap…

Breathe in.

…tap…tap…tap…

Breathe out.

…tap…tap…

Focus.

…tap…

Still.

…Tap—

He opened his eyes and saw the dark ceiling of the office come into focus. Sitting up on the sofa, he rubbed his head as he tried to steady his mind. There was someone else in the room with him. Before he could look, or voice his fear, he felt a breath on the back of his neck. A breath he hadn't felt in over a decade.

"I went into the dark and brought something back with me."

"What was it?" Sara asked him while he drove.

If he turned around, he would see it. Black masked cover head, glass eyes, scar across its face, protruding wings out of a black blood covered body, crooked teeth smeared with red blood, and when it spoke…"You owe me awe."

The Dragon. His dark shadow.

TBC…