Disclaimer : All rights belong to their owner.

Spoilers : This fiction evokes some events of the whole series of books.

Rating : T, for strong language and situations.

A/N : Andrea's character is a personal building. Quite contrary to some of my other texts, I'm not here following the events of the books but drawing on some of them to create my own story. The updates may be a bit more erratic than my other fictions. This fiction will switch between "present" and "past" chapters, so don't be surprised.
Anyway, as my mother language is (still) not English, I may or may not do spelling/grammar/conjugation/syntax mistakes, and I'm sorry if it disturbs you too much. I wish you a great reading, feel free to comment at any time !

Cherry Wine

I

When she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. It wasn't really surprising : it has been months she was there, and nothing ever changed. More precisely, four months and five days. It wasn't out of genius that she knew that. She only managed to keep up to date thanks to the newspaper she could get hands on. Most of the time, it was the prison guards that gave her theirs, once their day was over.

And it was almost funny to see that even outside, nothing changed. There were as many murders – it was just not the same people who committed them. And although they had dozen of murderers to catch, the FBI still desperately attempted to get her to spit the location of one of them. As if I knew where he is, she thought, staring blankly at the roof.

Within five minutes, if the clock in the corridor were to be trusted, Will Graham would come. He would sit on the folding chair leaning on the wall. He would cross his arms and wait approximately two more minutes before asking the same question over again. She would then sat in front of him, on the edge of what was called her bed. She would make some general remark on yesterday's weather, or on the TV programs, depending on what kind of newspaper she had read. He would lose patience. He would leave, promising that she wouldn't get away with it this easily. And she would come back to her reading of the day's newspaper.

At least, it's how things would go if nothing changed. When she heard Jack Crawford's powerful voice, at the other end of the corridor, she guessed that no, things wouldn't go like this. She sat and waited for him to come closer, cross-legged on her mattress. Or whatever bears that name, anyway.

He had aged. At least, he looked like he had aged. He had huge dark-circles under the eyes and he seemed to struggle only to bear the folding chair. He only granted her a gaze once he was sitting and once he'd gotten rid of his trench coat.

Back then, an eternity before, this man had been some kind of a mentor. A man she looked up to like a student her professor. He had shaped her the way he imagined a great investigator to be – obedient but incisive, bright but submissive. But another man destroyed this pretty working and reinvented her. She had evolved. She had adapted.

"Hello, Jack," she greeted him with a raspy voice. She didn't really have the opportunity to use it. "I almost thought you would never come.

- I'd rather not have come.

- You're vexing me."

She shrugged. He didn't react. Was he already this old, when I met him ? She couldn't remember. It'd been so long, since the time she taught at the University of Bristol. And it'd been even longer since the day he came to her and asked if she wanted to be part of his team, in Baltimore. Why had she accepted, by the way ? Pride, a voice she hadn't heard since four months and five days whispered. She couldn't help but smile.

From the beginning, it hadn't been a good idea. He needed a strong team to find the Chesapeake Ripper – hiring a French should have looked like a great idea, given the guy's supposed genealogy. Hiring an international law specialist should have looked like an even greatest idea, given his tendency to strike everyone. But accepting, that wasn't a good idea. She knew it, but it hadn't stopped her from doing it.

"Why are you here, dear Jack, if you don't want to be here ?

- 'Cause a part of me still believes you're redeemable.

- Not the most lucid part," she laughed. "Do you really think you'll manage to do what you little protégé fails to do almost daily ?

- No. But I think I can succeed where I failed."

She narrowed her eyes. She wasn't an empath, contrary to Will, and she wasn't a psychiatrist like Lecter. She wasn't able to guess what people thought. That being said, she had passed enough time around these two to be able to decrypt those people's reactions.

But she didn't need all that to feel all the regret and remorse in his voice. She could have softened herself and eased his existence. But it was partly his fault if she was there : having remorse was the least he could feel toward her.

"You're going to have be a more specific, you have failed to do plenty of things.

- To protect you," he answered without reacting. "I failed to protect, Will and you. This time…

- This time, what ? You want to get me out of here ? Give me my freedom back ?" She burst into laughter. "Oh, Jack. You should take time off, you desperately need it.

- You… You don't know ?"

She frowned and shook her head. She had no idea what she didn't know, but it seems that he came specifically because of this thing she didn't know. Well, well. What is going on in the FBI ?

Had he been fired ? That could mean plenty of things, for her. And for him. Maybe she would never see him again and it was his very last try to catch Lecter ? If it was the case, well, it was a failure. Maybe all the team was dismantled and Will was giving up ? A good thing. He was perhaps the only agent in this god-forsaken agency capable of finding Hannibal.

"I'm not going to beg you to tell me, if that's what you're waiting for," she sighed. "I can survive without knowing your plans.

- These are not mine, they're Will's.

- And what does Will want ?

- To transfer you. In Pelican Bay."

Her smile froze and she spotted drumming her fingers on her knee. As a jurist the slightest bit interested in humanitarian questions, she knew the State Prison of Pelican Bay. But she had a slightly more advanced knowledge of it thanks to the FBI, and it wasn't for the best.

It wasn't a woman's prison. That was all she could think about, for some seconds. And that's all she said to Crawford. He looked dumbfounded to hear that remark.

"Indeed," he said, slowly. "But it's also…

- The prison in which the majority of the guys we arrested are locked up.

- Will wants to transfer you, once he would have proven you're mentally sane." He gulped. Hardly. "The State Attorney already gave his consent."

She couldn't help but laugh, again. Among every beings on this planet, it was William Graham who couldn't stand her and lost it. Hannibal would be proud, she thought, shaking her head. Oh, she knew what that transfer meant. She was well-treated, here : it was more or less a psychiatric hospital, they treated prisoners like patients.

There, she would just be a monster amongst others. A monster responsible for a great number of arrests that led a great number of men behind this prison's bars. It wasn't complicated : Will wanted to turn the screws on her and make her speak. He had just unknot the sword of Damocles above her head and threatened her to cut the last noose. But he hadn't taken into account the most obvious element.

"There's nothing funny, Andrea. You're going to…

- Die there, most probably." She smiled even more. "Oh, Jack. But I'm not scared of death.

- There's still a way. If you talk, I can help you.

- If I tell you where Lecter is, you'll free me ?"

He nodded. There was so much sincerity in the way he was staring at her, so much naivety. It clashed with his age, with his face's gravity. She kept quiet and stared back at length. He really believed it. And he still believed he had a chance, and perhaps it was the worst.

She stood up and got closer to the pane that separated them. She sat in front of him, on the cold ground of her cell. He came closer as well, unnoticed. He really believed she was going to talk. A hazy feeling of sadness invaded her spirit for a second, just enough for her to realize how pathetic the scene was.

"You would free a murderer ?

- You didn't…

- You don't know. You want to believe the only thing I did was following him." She shook her head. "Wishful thinking.

- You're not like him, you've never been. How could you have let him change you ?

- Let him ?"

This time, her laugh was so enthusiastic that it echoed all around her and reverberated on the four walls of her cell. She could almost feel Crawford's shivering of awe. His pupils were narrowing. He's scared. As if she could do anything, in her plastic and concrete cage.

But it was hilarious, really, how he could think he was above any guilt. How he held Hannibal responsible of absolutely everything that happened to her and everything that happened to Will before her. As if he couldn't stand any pitch of guilt.

"So you still haven't learn," she sighed, almost admiring. "You have the most stunning ability to lie to yourself, Jack.

- I'm not responsible for what happened to Will, and I'm not responsible for what you became.

You're responsible for absolutely everything that happened since I joined the FBI. You introduced me to Hannibal. You asked me to interrogate him, once Will finally caught him. You let Will take care of Dolarhyde. You let me fall into Hannibal's claws. You never did anything to prevent anything from happening." She stood again to face him, her thinner body motionless. "So you can have regrets, Jack, that's the least you can do. But I'm not helping you ease your conscience."

A tiny voice in her head was angered that she was rejecting the proposal of the last man inside the FBI that still cared about her, but she quieted it. She wasn't an agent anymore, she wasn't an investigator. He wasn't her superior, she wasn't his subordinate. This chapter was over.

She had turned the page the day she almost died to prevent Hannibal, on the run back then, from being caught. When she literally threw herself between him and the FBI's bullets – when she let him take her with him. What followed belonged to another chapter she preciously kept hidden in her memory, where no one would steal or taint it.

"So go, and tell our dear Will that he can send me to Guantanamo that it wouldn't change a thing. And go on vacation, Jack.

- Andrea…

- Farewell, agent Crawford." She slightly smiled and waited for him to have stood up to add. "Give Bella my regards."

He froze for a couple of seconds, as if shot, before going on with his gestures. He fled quickly. Her eyes followed him and she went back on her bed. So I'm going to die. The idea seemed weird. Almost surreal. All these months of run away almost had her lost conscience of her mortality. It wasn't painful, just unpleasant. Like a wound she would have forgotten since years and that would remind her of its existence just now.

Still, she always had a sharp conscience of her existence's fragility, conscience which hadn't ceased to grow until she actually came close to death. Since then, it was like the burden of mortality had lifted, that she had freed herself from this fear by almost dying. Automatically, she touched the scar on her abdomen. It wasn't painful either. Nothing was painful anymore.

She crossed her legs and closed her eyes. Her life's book had numerous chapters. Every each one of them ended on a death. She knew these chapters by heart : the first one ended with her family's death. The second one, with her colleague's death, in Bristol. The third one, with Dolarhyde's death. The fourth, with hers – at least, with what could have been hers. The fifth… Would it end on her second death ?

She vaguely smiled and collapsed on the mattress. She wasn't going to sleep. She had too many things to remember before going to Pelican Bay. It was the only place she could find Hannibal : in her memory place he helped her build.