A/N: This was supposed to be at the end of chapter 15, but I wanted a little more time with it.
If this were a movie—and that's how I see all my stories, they are movies in my head—then this would be extremely visual and surreal. All I can give you is my weird writing style and a song, which is the theme song for this story 'Beautiful Crime' by Tamer. I hope it works out. Fingers crossed.
Chapter 16:
~"Each step I left behind
Each road you know is mine
Walking on a line ten stories high
Say you'll still be by my side—"~
As he felt the breath of the Dragon on the back of his neck, the lights in his office flickered as the dark that had crept inside remained at the edges of his vision. His head felt…different. In a dream, but not a dream.
Was he awake? He didn't know.
~"If I could take your hand, oh
If you could understand
That I can barely breathe, the air is thin
I fear the fall and where we'll land—"~
Moving his heavy legs, he stood and took a step as the lights continued to flicker like some horror movie. He heard the buzz of the lights, saw the butterflies and insects on the walls, his pet spider in its cage, and the jars on the shelves as clearly as if he were awake in his office. This was a dream. He hadn't woken up from his meditative state at all, had he?
He knew that because standing directly in front of him was the Dragon.
~"We fight every night for something
When the sun sets, we're both the same—"~
The body of a mythological creature: half man, half dragon with wings protruding out of its back. Crooked fanged teeth smiled and he saw red blood in its mouth. There was black blood covering the bare body and hands.
~"Half in the shadows
Half burned in flames—"~
Its eyes were a reflection of his own as he stared into them. And in its eyes, he felt lost. Drifting into an abyss, ready to fall. Looking down under his feet, he noticed—for the first time—the creature's feet. They were hooves, like…deer? A male deer was a buck. Garrett Jacob Hobbs impaled his victims on buck antlers.
Below their feet, he saw the dark void under him as it got harder to breathe.
~"We can't look back for nothin'
Take what you need, say your goodbyes—"~
Reaching up, he rubbed his own neck, feeling his pulse as it continued to rise. Out in the hallway, he saw blinking yellow lights. Hazard lights from a truck. A distant memory, a dream, entered his head as he dropped his hand and took a step towards the open door.
The ground under his feet felt like quicksand as he paced back-and-forth across the deserted road. The moon was high in the sky, blinking yellow lights flashed across the pavement, and in front of him the stalking eyes of a dog. They followed him as it paced along with his long strides. Both feeling scared, trapped, but desperate for a hand to feed it. To reach out and touch it; save it. His soul, like the dog's belly, was starved.
~"I gave you everything
And it's a beautiful crime—"~
Walking out into the hallway of the crime lab, he didn't see anyone. It was vacant, empty, as the ceiling lights flickered and the yellow hazard lights blinked on and off down the hallway. All around him the dark crept along the edges as the Dragon stood in the middle of the hallway before turning away from him. It was heading towards the conference room. Fear clenched his chest again, anger rose up into his throat, as he stalked after it.
~"Each breath I left behind
Each breath you take is mine—"~
Passing the DNA lab, he glanced inside and saw the dog from his dream. It was pacing behind the glass, snarling, and growling. Out from the shadows of the room, he saw himself when he was so much younger, walking up to the dog, then pacing right along with it. Then he bent down and reached his hand out for it.
The dog backed away and then tentatively came forward, sniffing his hand, and then letting him grab it. He had to save it.
~"Walking on a line ten stories high
Fear a fall, you're asking why—"~
As he continued down the hallway, he glanced over, and in the reflection he saw in the glass, were the glowing eyes and face of the Dragon. Jumping back into the opposite wall, he stared at his reflection in startled horror. The Dragon's face appeared as dark as his thoughts and pierced into his heart, freezing him in place.
He stared at the face as rage filled his body at the sight. He closed his eyes against the assault and when he opened them, he saw an unfamiliar face in the reflective surface. It blurred like his thoughts.
Who are you? Something to be afraid of, he thought.
"Because of what they saw in you." He heard Sara's voice in his head. "You trusted them…but, what if they were wrong? What if you have no reason to be afraid?"
Her voice was always there to bring him back. It settled him as the fear he'd been feeling started to ease. Letting out a deep breath, he pushed off the wall and continued down the hallway. In front of him, the Dragon glanced over its shoulder and grinned.
~"Leaving the things we lost, oh—"~
Passing the A/V lab, he peered inside and froze at the sight of what he saw. It wasn't the lab room, but a living room. From the couch to the wallpaper, the wooden floors, and the old 1950's television set, he knew it was the house he grew up in.
On the couch was a man. His arm rested on his chest, he had a beard, the same as he had now, he'd been working outside in the yard. Had come inside to rest, he'd felt weird, dizzy—It was his dad. And he wasn't breathing.
Standing in front of the couch was a little boy, nine years old, and from his fingers slipped the Spiderman comic he'd been reading.
A deep sorrow filled him as he stepped away, further down the hallway, as he followed the Dragon.
~"Leaving the ones we've crossed—"~
Looking through the glass into the next evidence room, he saw it filling with sand, palm trees, and the ocean. The bright sun shined out of the ceiling as he watched a moment from his past replaying out in front of him.
Molly was leaving him. Kevin was scared and wanted to protect his mother. He was angry, scared, as all of her pain filled his own chest as he thought about how much he'd failed them. Then they were gone. Disappeared. And he was left, feeling cold and alone.
"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt in solitude, where we are least alone," as Lord Byron wrote.
But he hadn't been alone. He had a companion. Feeling it behind him, hot breath on his neck, he closed his eyes against the pain it caused. Due to his desperation to drown out the Dragon, he'd lost his family. His life.
As he continued to follow the Dragon, he asked himself: what are dragons?
~"I have to make an end so we begin
To save my soul at any cost—"~
They represented the incomparable strength and valor of the heroes who defeated them. In the Hebrew bible, Leviathan was created to play in the sea and defeat the monster as a demonstration of his power. In the Christian tradition, the dragon was a symbol of evil, however, in the Orient, it symbolized supernatural power, wisdom, strength, and hidden knowledge. Then again, it was also the embodiment of chaos and untamed nature.
Will had been chaotic and untamed. Then in time, wiser and stronger. As for his knowledge. He'd always felt that his mind, his imagination and intuition, his memory were all gifts he'd been given since birth. Gifts from the God that he did believe in. And he was the way he was for a reason.
That was why he thought that this job chose him. He did not choose it.
~"We fight every night for something
When the sun sets, we're both the same—"~
Stopping outside of the breakroom, he peered inside and saw a painting hanging on the wall. In his head, he heard the "shhh" from the curator of a museum.
Hand-in-hand, round and round, through the halls of his mind that turned into the halls of a museum. School children were laughing, holding hands, as a teacher led them past the paintings, the sculptures, and standing, staring at a painting was a boy.
Inside the breakroom, stood the boy with dark curly hair as his eyes soaked in the image of a beast and under the beast was a woman. She was clothed in white, like an angel. He tilted his head as he viewed the piece of art. The plague read: "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun".
~"Half in the shadows
Half burned in flames—"~
Unlike Francis Dolarhyde, when he had viewed the William Blake painting he hadn't seen a beast that preyed on innocent women who murdered families. It wasn't something to be desired or wanted through acts of depravity. What he saw was exactly what Sara had told him.
"I know you've had to kill two serial killers already. I don't think that makes you a murderer or a killer. It makes you…" She took a moment and then told him, "A savior. And you do it by going to that dark place where most people can't go."
Facing the Dragon, it stood right in front of him. Waiting. Watching. Then it turned and kept walking. It pulled him along.
He was tethered to it.
~"We can't look back for nothin'
Take what you need, say your goodbyes
I gave you everything—"~
Entering the conference room, he saw on the empty table the metronome tapping back and forth. Next to it a projector and film canisters. Falling all around him from the ceiling, as if being thrown down at him from somewhere far above that he couldn't see, were photographs, notes and letters, and pages from books.
They were piling up on the table and scattering over the floor. Getting a closer look, he saw that they were of his entire life. Memories, things he'd written and seen, and books he'd read.
~"This darkness is the light—"~
Grabbing a photograph out of the air, he saw that it was recent, in the SUV as he drove Sara back to the crime lab.
He told Sara, "It was a manifestation."
"Of what?" she asked.
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."
He smirked at the Dragon as he finally realized what it was. The scar across the right side of the face. Reaching up, he felt with his fingers the old scar that had once been on his face. The reflection of his own eyes in the mirrors. And under that black blood, he saw the scar coming up from the right hip bone, around the abdomen and stopping, jaggedly, at the left rib.
He heard the Dragon's voice in his head, and it sounded very much like his own, as it said, "See." A laugh started to build in his throat, warm and full of clarity, as it said again, "See—"
"Us," he finished. With a knowing smirk, he quoted Job 30:29-30, "A brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat."
The Dragon smirked, and it resembled his own.
Why the hell didn't he see that sooner? Fear, and his inability to see himself. His Dragon wasn't a monster. It was a combination of all the Dragons it had slayed. All the times it had saved lives. A manifestation of a dream. A fantasy that a little boy had after the death of his father. A boy named Will Graham who wanted to grow up and slay monsters.
This was what he was underneath.
On the conference room table was an old 8mm film canister and projector. Dolarhyde had used those films to watch the families that he stalked and murdered. He picked up the canister and read the handwritten title on the old and peeling piece of tape. It was his handwriting, and it read: My Becoming.
~"This darkness is the light—"~
Feeding the film through the projector, he asked the Dragon, "Shall we?"
It turned at the same time he did as they both took a seat on the edge of the table. As the flickering light from the projector played across the conference room wall, he watched moments of his life flash before his eyes.
~"We fight every night for something—"~
Under him, gasping for a breath through the blood sputtering out of her throat was Hobbs' wife. He'd slit her throat and tossed her out of the door when he saw him coming up the steps. The woman gasped, eyes wide with fear, then her body went slack. Life was gone from her eyes.
A primal scream pierced his ears. There was someone else in the house with Hobbs. The daughter. The door was locked from the inside and his shoulder throbbed as he threw his body into the door until it busted open. Swinging his gun around in front of him, he followed the screaming as he yelled out, "Garrett Jacob Hobbs! FBI!"
His face paled as he saw them in the kitchen. Hobbs had a hold of his daughter from behind and was covered in his wife's blood. The daughter was a match to the physical description of all of Hobb's victims. Blue eyes, long auburn hair parted in the middle. Young. The knife against the girl's neck moved.
Gunfire erupted in his ears as he fired. He kept firing as bullets slammed into the murderer's chest. Upon hearing the click-click-click of the empty chamber, he shivered breathlessly as he lowered the gun.
~"When the sun sets, we're both the same—"~
The phone dropped from his hand as a sharp pain ignited in his gut as an arm wrapped around him from behind. His left hand grabbed onto the hand that held the knife. His right hand reached for the gun on his hip that he couldn't reach due to the arm blocking it. He felt the pain, the warmth of the blood on his hand, as the knife started slicing, curving up and around to his left rib.
He felt his blood pouring out down his body, his heart beating in his ears along with the pain.
Lecter spoke into his ear, "There's only one God here, dear Will, and it's not yours. For this is my will."
He was bent backwards, lifted up off his feet, then dropped to the floor as the knife was yanked out. With his breathing coming in gasps, heart beat hammering in his ears, he looked up and saw the man standing over him.
It was no longer a man, but a horned monster. That pitiful thing…
Feeling his body growing numb, he closed his eyes and floated into nothingness and he thought…Why did he delight in wickedness?
It wasn't to be wicked himself, but to understand it. Once he understood it, he could stop it. But to do that, he had to be a brother to it. He had to reach out his hand for it, and shake the hand of the Devil that reached back. Then, and only then, could he stab it in the heart.
Lecter believed himself to be a God.
"Only someone as equal to God can defy God," he heard himself say.
Since a God tried to kill him, and he survived, then that meant he was an equal in the eyes of that God. They were the same.
~"Half in the shadows
Half burned in flames—"~
He sat at the table in the cabin with Molly and Kevin outside playing catch while he read the newspaper, the National Tattler, that the killer was doing the same at that exact same moment. He threw the paper down and went outside, grabbed up a fishing pole, and headed to the lake with Kevin running after him, tossing the glove back to his mother. Sitting on the boat, Kevin beside him in the silence, he peered over the water and saw the Dragon watching them from the shoreline. Waiting.
Then later that evening, after telling Molly to go to her father's place in Montana, he walked out onto the porch, glass of whiskey in hand, and saw the Dragon in the yard. It was staring at the cabin, into the windows where Molly and Kevin slept, watching and waiting. It smiled at him. He saw the blood on its crooked teeth.
There it was again, in Florida, up on the dunes of the sand on the beach as the dogs sniffed around it because they couldn't see it.
~"We can't look back for nothin'
Take what you need, say your goodbyes—"~
Only then did he understand why it was there, watching over his family. The Dragon hadn't wanted to kill them, but to protect them.
Tearing his eyes away from his life, he looked over at the Dragon as the Dragon looked over at him, and said, "This is my memory palace. It's not the dark void. The darkness is where I create dreams, but here…Here is where I analyze my thoughts and memories like they were pieces of evidence."
The Dragon picked up another film canister off the conference table and handed it to him.
Taking it, he read the handwritten label: Hannibal Lecter.
~"And it's a beautiful crime."~
Time seemed non-existent. It seemed like everything he was and had been was being reworked inside his mind. His logical mind reconfigured. His thoughts were the Dragon's thoughts. His body was its body. His life, their life. He was no longer one. And he let it happen. The comfort of the presence overwhelmed him and he was lost to it. In that beautiful, sweet surrender, he finally knew what peace felt like.
And in that peace, he felt the presence of the Dragon Slayer next to him as the memory palace faded away and he found himself sitting on the edge of the table in the conference room, eyes roaming over the crime scene photos, all the notes, and evidence from the last couple of days.
Lecter was there, in the evidence. They just had to find him.
TBC…