Chapter Four: Reflections and Deflections.

Will Graham's P.O.V

Will Graham saw things in reflections. He had since he was a little boy. He did not mean that in the typical sense. Regrettably, his gift wasn't typical. He supposed a clearer description would be perceiving issues through deflections and refractions tinted and chiselled by the prism recognized as emotion and then reconstructed in a form of visual representation more digestible to the mind. For ease, he simply said he saw things, pretended he didn't, moved on, and left it at that. Yet, that was getting more and more difficult these days.

It was his job to see.

To see and feel. Feel and see. See and feel and lose. His own emotions were beginning to become something… Decidedly not his own. That was the quandary with empathy, Will thought. Whose to say what feelings were his or not? Will Graham was a man who felt as if he had a storm inside, the winds of hurt howling with the triggers of his past.

Where did the wind come from? From the east, wheezed from the shrieking maw of Garret Jacob Hobbs? From the west, where the phantoms of his father rested in shadow? From the high north, gasped from the angry eye of an ever-heaving Crawford? Or was it that murky south, deep and dark and damp, between moss and gloom, where sometimes, only some, he thought he saw a glimmer of the Ravenstag sighing swirls of smoke?

Will didn't want the storm, he never wanted the storm, he only wanted detachment. A place to breathe without the wind snatching his breath away. Perhaps it was the latest case that Crawford had sent him sniffing for like a blood hound that sent the guillotine swinging. A woman who hoarded kids, warping them, distorting, twisting, bending them like clay until, in a clandestine act, she took them home.

Took them home to murder their families.

There was something there, in that case, that Will refused to see echoed back. A seizing and supplanting that, as always, hit a bit too close to home. A break. Will needed a break, a moment to catch his breath and get his head screwed on right. That was all. A little break.

He didn't want to go to Alana. He couldn't stand the way she looked at him lately, with that pity slithering into her weeping smile. The pity of a person watching a dog who had been kicked one to many times. Empty pity. As with those people who watched the beaten dog crawl and drag its bleeding belly on the floor, who did nothing but shake their head and say it was such a shame, Alana would do nothing but quiver and lament.

Will could not go to Jack. He already saw Will as something broken, beyond mending, the wrench with a missing hook jaw, worthless apart from hammering in nails with brute force. Will couldn't stand the thought of letting the others at the Bureau see him like this, blinking and flickering like a candle caught in a hurricane.

Miserably, in Will's tiny sphere of social incompetence, that left only one other person. Doctor Hannibal Lecter. As if fate was giggling at him too, the good doctor had chosen just this moment to vanish for two weeks. Will's last appointment, three days ago, had to be rebooked through a voicemail of all things, Lecter's message simply apologizing for being away on 'business'. Whatever the fuck that entailed for a psychiatrist.

With no one else to turn to, nowhere to really go, Will had, of course, fled to his dogs. Possibly, that was why he was standing where he was that day, Winston leashed at his side, one unseasonably warm Baltimore morning in the middle of a farmers market. Shop stalls lined the underground route of the overhead highway, car horns and engines mixing with the hollering of vendors, a flamboyant scene with a milling throng of clatter and odours and headaches. Lovers pecked at each other, preening over artichokes. Housewives hustled and bustled and haggled. The elderly dithered over cuts of lamb and pig, soaking in the sunshine.

It was everything Will Graham hated, and it was exactly what he needed. It was what he hated. Him. Not Hobbs. Not Crawford, or Alana, or Hannibal, or any other killer that came ambling along. For a flash, Will was Will and nothing and no one else, and, regretfully, he needed to be reminded of that.

More and more and more often...

Winston nudged his knee, yapping, catching his care away from the roving mob swaying around them. Will bent down on his haunches, scratching behind the Labradors proud ear, fiddling with the leash, tightening his hold. He never generally leashed his dogs, couldn't stomach, as with many things, the sight of a collar, knowing all too well what being chained felt like, being jerked to places you had no desire to go, on the whims and wishes of a master, at best allegorically. Yet, needs must, and in the lively hordes of Baltimore's farmers market, unlike the woods in his backyard, Will couldn't afford Winston running off.

"Alright boy, we're nearly there."

There was a particular farmer in this flock of folly, who sold cow offal fashioned into dog food. Fresh and meaty, and everything his dogs adored. Just because Will was suffering didn't mean his dogs had to too. It was pricey, as all artisan goods tended to be, but, well, Will was comfortable. His dogs, and the odd fishing paraphernalia that he couldn't make himself, were the only things he routinely splashed the cash on, even if he had been wearing the same coat for the last eight years.

It didn't take him long to find the stall, it was always at the edge of the bulging barrage of lunacy, thank God, and it took him even less time to pay for the bag of dog food, heave it over his shoulder, and with a wagging Winston beside him, begin to return to his car. It was as he was traversing the carpark, halfway there, midway home, partway safe, that he spotted the Bentley.

Black, slick with polish, regal in the way it sloped and cut its pose, not a speck of dust or dirt spoiling chrome, glass or wheel. Strange in its severe purity, standing out from the sea of truck beds and Civics, imperial in its grandeur.

Will Graham knew that car.

He knew its owner too. Its owner who, as he did with everything he owned, matched it perfectly.

That was Doctor Lecter's car.

Will fumbled and halted, the dog food sliding on his shoulder, Winston lugging on for a step or two when he noticed the sudden stop. Will had never took the doctor as a man who went to these sorts of gritty, grassroot fairs. No. Will saw him in those artiste shops spelled with a pretentious extra p and e, in the streets of Europe, enveloped with truffles and wines and caviar.

So far from anywhere Will would be.

Could be.

Will politely snubbed the precipitous dip in his gut at the thought. It meant nothing. Nothing at all. As did his headaches, the mounting hallucinations, and the snowstorms still thundering inside to the song of Hannibal's laughter. Hannibal Lecter was his psychiatrist, nothing more. He was barely his friend on a good day. Will loathed him, in a way, loathed him with a fire he had never felt before, for the way he prodded and poked and pushed and never, ever, retreated. Ran. Abandoned him as most people did. His own mother included.

Will chuckled.

And Hannibal was, quite possibly, the only person who knew him so completely.

Who saw him.

Anew, he laughed.

His life was pitiful.

His work appointed therapist was his only friend.

How fucking depressing.

As if even an errant thought could conjure the man from the mists, Hannibal came around the side of his car to pop the boot, a tray of flowers, plum chrysanthemums if Will wasn't mistaken, balancing in his hands. Will dawdled. Hannibal was dressed casually that day, sandy hair dappled with grey falling across his forehead, peculiarly out the sleek confines of his suit, cashmere jumper and neat slacks still expensive but… Homely. He looked homely and… Domestic.

Once More, Will pretended he didn't feel the dip in his stomach, right bellow his navel, roll to a tangled squirming bead of friction knotted in his groin. He was getting good at that now. Pretending. He pretended he wasn't losing his damned mind each morning as he fought to get out of his sweaty bed-sheets. He pretended he didn't hear voices and see things other's could not. And, lately, he pretended Hannibal was his friend, just his friend, barely that. Yet, he didn't walk away, didn't shy off to his own car, he stood and watched. Watched as Hannibal shouldered the trunk open to put the tray away, before he turned and-

And held his hands out, out into the air, palm up, waiting. Confusion niggled at Will brows, drawing them tight over his grey eyes. Then she came, out from the rear of the adjacent car, clutching a soaring heap of haphazardly balanced potted orchids and arum lilies. So focused on Hannibal, Will had overlooked the girl, and now that he did see her, he wondered how he could have done so.

She was tiny compared to Hannibal, little compared to Will too, he thought, if she were to stand at his side. Tiny and… Broken. Completely, utterly broken. She was clad in green corduroy dungarees over an over-sized, dense white jumper, feet peeking out in a pair of battered tennis shoes. She appeared as if she wanted her clothes to devour her, eat her out of existence, camouflage her from life. Her long, pale blonde hair was messy, chaotic, entwined and flyaway slender, piled high upon her head in a bun.

Nevertheless, what snared his eye was her, what little she showed. She was… She was made up of sawn-off butterfly wings, Will thought. Pallid, soft, fragile, with a jagged and shattered end. Shadows stalked underneath her large, startlingly green eyes. A scar, ugly but elegant in a brutal way, cracked down her forehead like a bolt of lightning, peering out between the locks of her fringe. Her bottom lip was a mangled pasty mess, bruises mottled down chin, cut splitting flesh, as if someone had tried to bite it clean off her face.

Butterfly wings and pressed petals, lovely to look at, crumbling to dust when touched. And those green, green eyes of hers did not match a single thing about her. Clever, keen, perceptive, they were the eyes of an archaic soul. Someone who had seen a thousand lifetimes washed away in a tide, more moonlight than sunbeam, and still kept on watching the sea for sign or omen of lifeboat or shooting star.

Hunting for a hint of hope.

Winston barked.

The two glanced over.

Hannibal smiled graciously.

"Will, I did not expect to see you here."

Will shuffled, sliding the bag of food from his shoulder to thud at his feet, a nervous, twitchy little smile trembling at his mouth, as he shoved his glasses up his nose.

"I can say the same doctor. This doesn't seem to be your usual hunting grounds."

Something in his tone, or his voice, or perhaps even his words, made the smile on Hannibal's face switch to a smirk. There one moment, gone the next, scarcely sluggish enough for Will to catch. However, it was soon brushed away as Hannibal nodded down to the girl at his side, the girl who was frozen to the ground, staring uncannily close at Will, unblinking and unwavering.

Those eyes saw things, Will thought.

Saw things as his own did.

Alarmingly, he pondered if she glimpsed Hobbs at his back, in his head, digging and burrowing and tunnelling. Will shuffled in his stance again.

"Ah, I suppose it is not, but when needs must. Mischa here has a rather fantastic green thumb and has taken on the project of sprucing up my rather poorly neglected garden."

Will startled at the name, thankful that Hannibal missed the action as he took the flowers from the girl to put in the trunk of his car. Once, what felt like a lifetime ago, Hannibal had told him of a sister, when Will had been puzzled about what he should do with Abigail after he had, undoubtedly, killed her own father.

Mischa, the dead sister. Or not so dead, if she was standing beside him, what? Fifteen? Sixteen? No older, despite her aged, ancient eyes. Had Hannibal lied to him? Will curiously scanned the girl. He could see it now, close, with her attention on him. It was in the biting twists and slants and angles, the melancholy posture, the hollow grace of a dispossessed aristocrat. Lecters. Lecters were a breed of their own, if these two in front of him were anything to go by. A haunted beauty from an old world long lost.

Hannibal, at Will's sudden and swift descent into silence, as he always could, must have picked up on the jumbled thoughts of his mind, the whiff of suspicion at being lied to loitering, as the doctor smiled once more, gentle and soothing.

"How impolite of me. Will, this is my niece, Mischa. Mischa, this is Will Graham."

No lie, only his half-baked assumption then. Will chuckled nervously.

"Right, yes, of course. Hello, I'm Will. I'm your uncles patient."

He winced sharply. Will didn't know what it was about the girl, the sheer stillness of her as she regarded him, yet never braving to meet his eye, or how entirely out of sorts he had been over the last month, but a flair kindled in his chest. Made him try to appease, connect, and this, saying he was nutty enough to need her uncle habitually rooting through his head for demons, was how he introduced himself? He could have said colleague, friend, anything else but patient.

She startled, gaze flying away from him and to the ground between them, as she ostensibly came back to herself. She slouched closer to the car, closer to her uncle, and never looked back again.

"Nice to meet you."

Her voice was soft and airy, tinted with an English accent, as fractured as she was. Like him. Abruptly, surprisingly, with no reason Will could promptly see, he felt a strong sense of kinship there, drifting between them. The only difference between them, Will thought, was the years of experience he had over the girl at hiding the fissures and flaws.

"How long are you visiting for?"

Will didn't rightly know why he was trying so hard to get the girl to talk. He ordinarily shunned idle conversation. Yet, he wanted to. He wanted to see her laugh, perhaps smile, and meet his eye. If only to take his own mind of all the horrid little ghosts plaguing it. He thought, perhaps, she might need that too, even if it was only for a while. A muscle jumped in her jaw.

Nightmares.

Terrible nightmares.

She chewed that lip up herself, to stop the screams, Will would guess, and he was good at speculating. Nevertheless, she completely ignored his question, sidestepped and dodged, not so rudely, but in a way people ducked a bullet. Instinctual. Eyes still to the ground before them, she nodded at something, stuttering.

"Can I-I?"

Will frowned before he glanced down, spotting Winston bounding on his leash, wrenching to get to Mischa, tail wagging a mile a minute. Winston was anti-social on the best of days, preferring his woods and nooks and joints to chomp rather than a pat or a game of fetch. Will laughed, achingly real, so hot in his throat it almost burned. A laugh he had not had for a very long time.

"Sure, go ahead. Count yourself lucky. Winston hates people. He even barks at me sometimes."

Mischa came teetering as close only as much as she needed to, no further, close enough for Winston to use the last of his leash to get to her. She crouched down, indifferent to the dirt and grime of the car park, settling on her knees and began to fuss him enthusiastically. Winston's tail was virtually a blur. Her face lit up in a grin, toothy and wide and very much lopsided, and it transformed her face completely. She looked mischievous under the cold sun of Baltimore, part sprite, quasi-imp, with all the wayward danger of a fairy who knew your name.

"I like d-dogs."

And, by the way Winston was all over her, dogs liked her too. She peeked up, grinning, but only made it to his nose. The pieces of the jigsaw clicked together, and Will saw the portrait. No eye contact. Not ignoring a question out of rudeness or dodging, but for a lack of social skills. Blunt, single sentences. Speech impediment in times of emotional anxiety or duress. He could see it all so clearly now, with her grinning, refusing to meet his gaze head on. It wasn't that hard when Will himself had the same scrabble letters dashed on his wonky board.

Autism.

The clunk of the Bentley's boot knocking shut brought his focus away from the hunched girl and wiggling dog, as he watched Hannibal stride around them, coming to Will's side, hands pressing into pockets, head tilted as he watched the pair, answering what his niece couldn't.

"Mischa will be staying, hopefully, indefinitely. She lives with me now."

The decisive snap of a connection linking, neurons firing, ties binding like constellations on a map of the stars. Will understood now. Better than most. You could spot an orphan nearly a mile off. No matter what they wore, how they walked, talked or acted, there was a reedy doggish vigour to them. The girl was delicate, certainly, perhaps she was made up of hacked up butterfly wings and dried out petals, but there was a steal frame below it all, a lithe intensity that bellied a buried strength.

Will opened his mouth to speak when Winston's tail stopped its thwacking on the pavement. Will glanced back down to the pair, frowning. Winston was staring dead ahead at something over Mischa's shoulder, a roaring growl beginning to rumble in his barrelled chest. Will's hand tightened on the leash.

"Winston! Stop! Winston!"

It was no use. The dog was crawling backwards, hackles raised, belly low to the ground, ears drawn back to its scalp, tail between its legs, still staring at that empty space behind Mischa's shoulder. The girl didn't look too surprised, oddly, at Winston's hasty shift of stance, as she took a gander over her own shoulder. Something must have caught her attention as her shoulders sagged defeatedly before she dusted her hands off on her thighs and stood, backing away from the dog woefully.

"I'm sorry. He's normally not like this. I don't know what's got into him. He may be antisocial, but he doesn't normally growl or bark, and he always listens when I call and-"

He's rambling, he knows, as he knows by the plunging cast of the girls eye that she's sad. There's something tragic and damaged about the girl, the same kind of tragic ruin to himself, and he wants to erase it. Obliterate it from reality, because, maybe, just maybe, if there was hope for her, there might be hope for himself. However, she stood as he rambled, and-

Something wasn't right.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

One Bentley. Three people. One growling dog. A stripe hurtled in the corner of his eye. A shadow swelling. A pulse of movement in the reflection of the car window they were all standing by. One Bentley. One dog…

Four people.

Slowly, so slowly, Will bowed and squinted at the reflection. You see, Will Graham saw things in reflections. He had since he was a little boy. He did not mean that in the typical sense. Unfortunately, his gift wasn't typical. Yet, perhaps, just this once, one frightening time, it could be literal.

A man, towering, limber and nimble, dressed impeccably in black slacks and an emerald turtleneck, loomed right behind Mischa's reflection. A pale hand, long fingered and deft, rose high, sinking into her hair, almost lovingly stroking and caressing at intertwined curl. Will could only watch as the figure bent down and gingerly kissed the crown of her head.

Not in full command of himself, Will's gaze snapped back to Mischa staring at the floor, the real Mischa, and he sighed. Nothing. No one. Just a girl, sad and bent, and-

The same agile hand, coolly pale, white like marble, creeping from behind like a vine, slithering around thin neck, wrapping, squeezing, enveloping, trailing a streak of crimson, blood, and-

Mischa met his eye.

Green flashed scarlet.

Will stumbled back on troubled feet, bumped shoulders with Hannibal, tripped on a pothole, and went unceremoniously falling on his ass. Winston's snarl bit off to a yelp as his leash pulled, but all Will could focus on was the rapid pounding of his heart jackhammering in his chest, whipping against sinew and rib. Hands were on him swiftly, at elbow and shoulder, large and warm, pulling, gentle, persistent.

"Will, are you alright? Do you need to sit down? A drink?"

Will, wide-eyed and tongue thick between clenched teeth, with the help of Hannibal, came to a wobbly stand. He dared a glance at Mischa. She was still staring at him, though now she scowled too, and-

Nothing.

No hand.

No blood.

No red eyes.

Nothing.

Indeed, she looked upset, hurt perhaps, hurt and sorry and a little distraught. Will tried to laugh, though he was certain it sounded more like a snivel than a snicker.

"I'm fine. I'm… fine. I just felt a bit faint. Nothing too bad. I should-… I should probably head home. Grab a nap."

Hannibal didn't let go of the hold on his arm, shaking his head.

"I do not feel right leaving you alone to drive when you are obviously sick or tired. Come. I'll drive you back to mine where you can rest for an hour or two, away from the seclusion of your own mind, Crawford, and work."

Will was already babbling off his polite refusal, but it was, evidently, falling on deaf ears as Hannibal guided him to the car, ushered him into the passenger seat, and slammed the door before Will could slink back out as Hannibal took a step away. Mischa said nothing as she clambered into the back seat, followed by Winston being steered next to her.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

The voice was bright, gentle, trusting, a flap of thin wing against Will's eardrum. So far removed from those horrific wintry red eyes. Blood spattered on snow drifts. Will swivelled in his seat, glanced over shoulder, and saw Mischa watching him, anew, not meeting his eye. The battered, bruised and cut lip was trapped between her teeth as she worried the already split flesh, threatening to tear a new rivet. Will smiled, easy breezy, and completely lying.

"Couldn't be better. Just a… Headache. It's just a headache"

It hung sour in the air, rancid as all lies were, but Mischa didn't push as she nodded and sat back, feet folded beneath her, curling and coiling. Winston was back to twisting in on himself, squirrelling himself into a corner, ears down, huddled behind Will's seat, silent, as far away from Mischa as he possibly could be in the cramped car space, as if the dog was trying to make room in the back though Mischa was tiny and over the other side.

Hannibal slid into the driver's seat as Will veered back around. His gaze skimmed the rear-view mirror, and he had to fight down the sudden rise of bile burning his tender throat. The man was back, sitting in the reflection, stretched regally across the leather as if the seat was nothing less than a throne. One long leg crossed over the other, right beside Mischa, arm draped across the head support, toying lazily with a loose blonde curl from her bun, the man looked up.

Looked right at him in the mirror.

He fucking winked.

The ignition roared the engine to life as Will's gaze scurried away.

Yay or Nay?

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Mischa splashed the cold water on her flushed face as she hunched over the bathroom sink, eyes screwed shut tight, scoffing for what felt like the hundredth time.

"I told you already, I'm not going to do that."

She felt his sigh on the back of her neck as he lounged at her side, cold, gliding, goose bumps blistering her thin skin.

"Oh, Mischa. You grasp at your pain like a babe suckles at a pacifier. Predictably and infuriatingly tedious. Let it go and move one. One spell is all it takes and everything will be-"

"I told you no. No matter how simple or quick the spell is. I am not doing it."

The tutting came slow like the droplets of cool, crisp water off the tap drip, drip, dripping into the sink.

"Yes you will. You must. He's dangerous, Mischa. He sees things. He'll see right through you. Do it now and do it swift before he can do the same to you."

Mischa pushed away from the sink violently, her voice low and vicious and cruel, as she faced Tom Riddle head on.

"I am not killing Will Graham."

THANK YOU ALL for the follows, favourites and reviews! This chapter's for you, and I hope, even if it was a single line or word, you found something to smile about. As always, if you have a spare moment, please drop a review, they keep muses whispering, and hopefully, I will see you guys soon.