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For Will Graham
[Bucky still wasn't entirely sure how it happened.
The two of them had become closer over the months in Quarantine, something about Will's way of approaching a problem from a different angle and always understanding when Bucky needed to flee had helped Bucky feel more and more comfortable with him. Somehow they had developed a friendship, and that's all it was supposed to be for either of them.
Then there was a night, a confusing night with alcohol on Will's part and terrible dreams on Bucky's, and somehow they had ended up in an embrace much more intimate than mere friendship. What they had now would be hard to define, but it was definitely something more, something that had grown into the occasional kiss and a mutual but unspoken understanding of deeper feelings.
It's late at night when Bucky shows up as he always does, unannounced and at random through a window, perching on the windowsill to look in.]
Anyone home?
The two of them had become closer over the months in Quarantine, something about Will's way of approaching a problem from a different angle and always understanding when Bucky needed to flee had helped Bucky feel more and more comfortable with him. Somehow they had developed a friendship, and that's all it was supposed to be for either of them.
Then there was a night, a confusing night with alcohol on Will's part and terrible dreams on Bucky's, and somehow they had ended up in an embrace much more intimate than mere friendship. What they had now would be hard to define, but it was definitely something more, something that had grown into the occasional kiss and a mutual but unspoken understanding of deeper feelings.
It's late at night when Bucky shows up as he always does, unannounced and at random through a window, perching on the windowsill to look in.]
Anyone home?
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I'm glad you didn't do it.
[He said 'try' to murder a man, after all, not succeeded.]
If you get that sort of blood on your hands, it never washes out.
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When he spoke next, the words he shared were ones he had considered for quite some time. If for no other reason than he recognized that, because of them, James might just kill him. ]
I have that sort of blood on my hands, James.
Not innocents, the men I killed were killers themselves. But in each instance, I had the opportunity to stop before they died under my hands ... I didn't.
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He's very quiet for a very long time, but he doesn't move away.]
Why?
[When he does finally speak it's just that one word, hoarse and a little pleading, as though desperate for Will to have a good explanation, to have good reasons behind those choices.]
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Will felt like asking if they could take this conversation somewhere more comfortable, but then he figured that a conversation like this didn't deserve comfort. ]
I've told you, that back home I hunted serial killers for the FBI. [ Will began. ] Even though I was evaluated by the FBI and found to be too mentally unstable to become an agent. The head of the BAU, a man named Jack Crawford, used me as his point hound, because I had a way of processing the evidence in a crime scene.
[ They had spoken on bits and pieces of this but now Will attempted to pull the picture together. ]
Because of the way my brand of crazy works, I can put myself in the mind of anyone ... for instance a killer, and walk through the crime as the perpetrator. Feel what they felt, live their motivations, their thoughts.
It allowed me to make leaps along the evidence that then allowed Jack and his team to find, capture and convict the killers. I had a 100% closure and conviction rate on any case he used me on.
But you go that far into the dark, again ... and again you start bringing things back with you. [ He glanced at James, suspecting the other man understood what he was saying. ]
I kept trying to get away from it, but when Jack had a bad one ... the really bad ones that he couldn't break, he'd pull me back and put me into the field until the case was closed.
There was one killer that Jack was obsessed with, a man known as the Chesapeake Ripper. The Ripper would surface, kill in sounders of three and then disappear for months, sometimes years, only to surface again. Jack used a promising young trainee to try to work the Ripper case and she became one of the Ripper's victims.
Jack was ... the Ripper was his white whale.
[ And that was putting it mildly. ]
I tried, again to get out of the field, but Jack put me back in. This time though, he listened to the advice of psychologists and he set me up with a top psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter. It was Lecter's job to help me stay out of the dark, keep me sane.
Only, unbenounced to Jack, Lecter was the Ripper.
[ Will paused in the play of his fingers and looked over at James, giving that statement a moment to sink in. ]
For months, when I was at my most vulnerable, I had an apex predator in my head ... rearranging the furniture. Literally. Lecter used drugs, various psychological techniques, even let a raging case of encephalitis go untreated, in order to break my mind completely.
And he succeeded. [ There was no point in trying to pretend otherwise. ]
Lecter set me up as the Ripper and by the time I realized who and what he was, it was too late. Jack wouldn't believe me, was disgusted with me and there was no one who would even listen to me. Lecter had planted hard evidence as well as painted me as completely insane so as to ensure that I was isolated. Everyone I trusted betrayed or turned against me.
I ended up locked away in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminal Insane, while awaiting my trial.
[ Will exhaled a tired breath and reached up to rub at his temple. ]
That's when the mind games, really started.
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Is this why he felt such a connection to Will? They have both been broken down, both been tortured, until there had been nothing left of who they used to be and only the orders of someone else inside their heads. It doesn't absolve Will of his choices and his crimes, just like Bucky will never be able to wash the blood off his hands, but it does explain things.
Perhaps a little too well.
He can't forgive Will for what he's done, but he doesn't have to, it's not his place to forgive crimes that had nothing to do with him. His only choice has to be whether he can still trust him and whether he still wants to be with him, associate with him, or if this is too close to his own experience.]
Come on, let's get you inside.
[It doesn't address any of what he's just been told, but it's what comes out all the same as he offers a hand to Will. Perhaps he'll see some hope for conciliation in that gesture.]
We can talk there.
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Maybe that was alright? Will was the one who kept saying that James could never go back to who he was, but that he could live as the man he wanted to be. But Will also wasn't sure that there was a place for himself in either of those realities.
For now, however, he was exhausted, cold and obedient. He simply nodded his head and moved to gather his limbs, getting up to his feet. Will could feel the beginnings of a fever starting to work it's way just under his skin, he'd have to deal with that when he got home.
He would follow James without comment or question, whether it be back to his own home or to one of the other man's bolt holes. ]
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So it's to one of his rare safe spaces inside the city itself, an empty apartment above a shoe store obviously just waiting to be rented or sold. There's nothing inside that indicates anyone is living there at all, except for a rolled up sleeping bag in the corner of one empty room. But it's warm, and the water runs, so it's better than other places that he's chosen.
He gets them inside, leaving the lights off, and pads quietly across the bare floorboards of the main room to sit Will down by the sleeping bag.]
...you're safe here.