Chapter Text
Chapter 1:
Present Day, January 1st, 2018
The bistro was quaint, set flush against a row of other shops much like it. Just outside, the boardwalk led to a pay-to-see set of binoculars bolted into the wood, and the view opened up to the Pacific Ocean whose waves howled and crashed about in the wind. It was quiet in Astoria, Orgeon. The tourist season was long over, making way for the cold and rain that came during the winter. Special Agent Will Graham, Ghost-Agent of the FBI, sat with his back to the wall and his eyes on the two entries into the establishment, doing what he did best:
Dying.
“Were you followed?”
“No,” Abigail promised. Will would credit her one thing –she was discreet. Rather than make a show of attempting to blend in, she’d completely done so by appearing utterly normal and forgettable. Her jacket was a casual denim, her jeans black. Rather than a tacky baseball cap and obvious sunglasses in a dreary coffee shop, she wore her hair in a simple, low bun.
Her makeup was different, as was the hair color. The bun made it difficult to see, but it seemed as though she’d added some layers and bangs to her new appearance, too. In any other setting, it would be somewhat heartbreaking to witness; the poor thing completely believed every word that’d come from Will Graham’s mouth. They were going to run away together. He was utterly and hopelessly in love with her.
“Your father won’t let us be together,” Will murmured. “He almost killed me, Abigail.”
“He just doesn’t understand. He wouldn’t have really killed you, he just…”
Will waited for the ‘just’ that couldn’t come when one knew just who they were referring to. When she didn’t continue, he sighed.
“I don’t care that your father is the second-in-command to Victor Slakov, but we can’t stay here,” he said. “They’ve already put a hit out, not just inside of the mafia but to outside sources, too. When the Shrike wants someone’s head, he gets it. I’ll be dead in hours if we stay.”
“Jonathan, I…”
Even with blonde hair rather than brunette, she was still pretty. Her skin was wind-chafed from the ocean breeze, but makeup softened the manipulative and dark edge Will had first witnessed when he’d met her. Her thin lips pressed together tightly, then slackened. She looked away from him, out to the streets where passerby strolled, oblivious to her pains.
“If you want us to be together, we have to go now,” Will pressed.
“Where are we going to go?”
“To the south. We can catch a plane to Europe and lay low there. I have family that will keep us.”
Europe was a long way from the Pacific North West. Abigail fretted with her coffee, then took a sip and nodded, resolute.
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “I…I love you, Jonathan. I’d give up my family for you. I mean…he was going to kill you, after all.”
Will’s smile was all sweetness. “I’ll go to the car first. Wait thirty seconds, then follow me and get in. Make sure you’re not followed.”
Timing was everything when one had to end a secret identity. While the Glock at the small of his back and the lockpick set in his sock were important pieces to his rather particular skillset, Will Graham’s most important tools were first his empathy, then his ability to completely and utterly disappear. When one had a beautiful but ultimately doomed love interest in their mission, how one left was always far more important than how they arrived.
“One, two, three…”
He sat in the driver’s seat of the car and made a show of turning it on. As he counted, he glanced to the side where he could clearly see Abigail finishing her coffee and gathering her things. She hadn’t brought much; just a small overnight bag. Surely she supposed they’d find more suitable clothes in Europe, when he had her stashed away from her mobster father and a list of very bad men.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…”
The bomb sat just underneath the passenger side airbag. As he ensured that all of his things were accounted for, Will counted quietly, a habit he’d had for quite some time. Time was his true master, the way the hands turned on the clock. He’d done his job, and time was up. Despite a few complications, things had gone remarkably well. Almost easy, in fact. Planting the mole was as simple as homemade pie, considering the way the last mission had gone.
“Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six…”
She was walking out of the coffee shop now. Her smile when she saw him waiting lit up her entire face, and it was that image that burned into Will’s eyes, even as he reached down and pressed an unremarkable but rather important button.
The car exploded.
Will Graham wouldn’t see the horror on her face as the car went up in flames and took some of the aged fencing with it. He wouldn’t see her cry and scream as she called the police and fell to the ground, cradling her phone as she gulped for air. He wouldn’t see paramedics attempt to rescue the man trapped inside, nor would he see the numbness creep across her as the coroner confirmed that dental records assured them that it was indeed Jonathan Yorkman that’d died in the explosion.
Those things would come later, and by then he’d be likely be halfway across the country, tackling his next assignment.
Even so, as he trekked through the sewer and counted his steps, Will could confirm that a car bomb was by far the most entertaining way he’d died on a mission. Another time, it’d been a hit and run that’d taken his body with them down an alley. The time before that, it was a plane crash. The sewer entrance just beneath the car had been a bit difficult to close with the flames just overhead, but it’d been worth it. He’d keep it on the list for the next time that another one of his personas had to die.
Because out of all the things that Will Graham could do, dying was just about one of the easiest of them.
-
Twelve Months Previous: January 1, 2017
“Plane crash?”
Agent Jack Crawford, known Director of the BAU for the FBI and classified Director of Ghost Program Q, dropped the files onto the desk where they hit with a thud and stirred up a few dust particles.
“I was feeling risky,” Will replied, and he watched one of the motes spin about in the air. It was far easier to watch that than watch Jack pace behind his desk; watching people meant watching their eyes, too, and Will hated that sort of thing when he wasn’t on a job. Eye contact meant seeing too much, piecing together the bits best left unsaid.
Dust motes were far, far more entertaining.
“Do you know the PR nightmare this is?”
Jack had a way of standing when he was livid that gave him all appearances of a linebacker from the 1980’s ads. Will saw it out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t help a smile.
“You know I don’t watch the news much.”
“Christ, Will,” Jack growled, “I give you kudos for finishing your job, down to the last second, exactly six months after it’d began, but that’s not really all that important to me, seeing as how people are coming forward to reporters and claiming their loved ones were on that plane!”
“Like I said: I don’t watch the news much.”
“The whole point of this program is that it is a ghost program. If people know about it, it’s not entirely effective, is it?”
“Ghost Agents are only ghosts if no one knows they’re alive,” Will agreed, and he looked away from the dust mote. “Which is why it was important that I died.”
“On a plane crash! Those don’t really happen all that often in America –let alone anywhere else in the god damn world!”
“Which is why I paid a visit to a drug house and located a few people that died from overdose. The man in the house said that they’d just toss the bodies, so I found their identification instead and tracked down their families or friends, sending messages from phone, social media, or mail that informed their loved ones that they’d be flying out to attend a conference that weekend.”
It took Jack a moment to follow Will’s train of thought. His brow furrowed, and he dragged his fingers along a small patch of beard –scraggly. He’d missed a spot shaving, and Bella hadn’t been there to point it out. Will looked back to the dust motes.
“Rather than let them find out their loved one died of drug use, let them think a terrible crash took them instead. They speak up about their family dying, and-”
“And my identity dies, shifted out of the limelight since my family couldn’t be found to comment on the loss.”
Jack’s shoulders relaxed first; then his jaw, then his hands that’d been clenched to fists. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he breathed, and he leaned on the desk and laughed. “Beneath that flannel, you’re one son-of-a-bitch.”
Will didn’t care to comment on that. He felt Jack’s relief like a heating pad left too long on his back. “I assume you’ve got something else for me?
“You don’t think I brought you here to kick your ass?”
“Two birds, one stone,” said Will. “What have you got?”
Jack wasn’t one to hold on too long now that he had control over the situation. In the Ghost Program Q, there wasn’t much in the way of a chain of command. There was Jack Crawford, then the Ghost Agents, and anyone else was just an obstacle. Jack rolled his shoulders, popped his neck, then retrieved another file from his cabinet, handing this one over rather than tossing it on the desk. It’d be the closest to an apology that Will would ever get.
“What do you know about movie star Hannibal Lecter?”
The photos were high quality. Will flipped through photo upon photo of the supposed Hannibal Lecter, eyeing the sharp profile, high cheekbones, and expensive tuxes that blended with Hollywood red carpets and bright lights.
“He’s on a few movie posters,” Will recalled.
“More than a few,” Jack replied. “This guy is an Oscar winner, academy award winner, golden globe winner…you name it, he’s done it.”
“Okay.” There was a beat, and Will shifted in his chair. “Is he blackmailing someone? Part of a sex slave trade?”
“No, he’s the target of a Lithuanian mob.”
“Lithuanian,” Will echoed. “Aš nesuprantu.”
“Good, good,” Jack coached, “glad you kept up on your languages.”
“How’d he piss them off?”
“Bad blood. See, guy by the name of Mason Verger runs a big meat packing factory, specifically pork. Breeds, sells, butchers, you name it. Family thing. Behind the scenes though, he smuggles drugs in to a specific small family making their way into LA, kind of pushing up on the Russian mob there. They’ve got bad blood.”
“We’ve all got bad blood with Russia,” Will agreed.
“So Verger’s molesting children and torturing them –real sick fuck with a lot of money to pay away his crime, but don’t get me started on that cover up –and he’s using his connections to access big stars. Well, he decides to target this kid that just so happens to be working on a movie with Hannibal Lecter.”
“Will paused on a report and scanned it, dragging a finger down the margin. “He shows up at Verger’s house, starts a party with him, they do some drugs, Verger starts cutting his face up and eating it, and Lecter calls the police. Police on the scene, they start digging…boom. They find evidence of the Lithuanian mob all over the place.”
“Lithuanian mob, and a kid in the basement.”
Will looked back to Jack and shared a grim, bleak grimace.
“Not only did it stop all of the trafficking in the area, but they lost well over five million in drugs alone,” said Jack, and he sighed. It was the kind of sigh that aged a person. “So...they’re a bit pissed.”
“And they’re blaming Hannibal Lecter for it?”
Jack nodded and began to pace listlessly back and forth. Will went back to reading the files.
“We’re going to pose you as a bodyguard, now that he’s finished a controversial World War 2 movie. You stay close enough to cover him should they make a move on him, and gather intel while you’re there. If we can flush out a few fat cats, so much the better. Save a movie star philanthropist with an apparent drug problem, make the FBI look good again.”
Jack flashed Will a savage grin.
“And that’s the kind of PR that won’t get you an ass-chewing,” he added.
“Is Lecter aware of this?” Will asked, ignoring the dig.
“Hell, not at all. And he’s not to be made aware. The more normal he behaves, the closer they’ll get to him so we can nab them. A single bodyguard won’t look suspicious after what’s happened.”
Will stood and tucked the file under his arm. In that moment, snow gently falling outside of the DC headquarters, lamplight silhouetting Jack’s broad shoulders and caressing the manila folder on the desk, marked with a red stamp, he felt a sudden chill. It was much akin to the feeling of someone stepping on your grave, that morbid dread that clawed deep and left marks. He cleared his throat and finally let himself lose track of the dust mote still floating nearby. The feeling passed, and he pressed it flat to the back of his mind.
“Understood.” He strode to the door and paused just abreast it, glancing back to a Jack still standing regally in the moonlight.
“Happy New Year, Jack.”
“Happy New Year, Will.”
-
January 8, 2017
Alana Bloom was one of the best actresses within the thirty-two to forty-seven-year-old demographic.
She was also a lovely spy and informant.
“A bodyguard?” she scoffed. “You don’t know him, but Hannibal Lecter is not someone to really think about hiring bodyguards.”
“That’s why you’ll use your friendship and repertoire to convince him.”
LA was hot. Heat rippled off of the sidewalk, left strips of singeing, stinging pain on the back of his legs from the wooden slatted chairs. His knee was in the sunlight, and beneath the pressed black suit his skin protested.
Alana was completely shielded by a large umbrella, a sunbathing hat, and enormous sunglasses. She didn’t share her shade, and she didn’t seem keen on changing her mind on that.
“He’s not someone you convince, either. Once he makes up his mind, he makes up his mind.”
“You once convinced an heiress to divorce her husband so that your informant could sweep in and marry him instead to gain terrorist intel.”
She spared him a red-lipped smile and turned her head to look across the yard. It was a large, stone privacy fence that enclosed them, covered by security guards and cameras. Alana Bloom wasn’t one to leave her safety up to chance.
“Are you going to need me as a fake romance to keep a solid cover?”
“Not this time.”
“Your need for love as a tool in every mission I’ve heard of is ridiculous, you know,” she said. “I think you’re projecting your need for companionship into your work.”
“Hardly. It’s an avenue of tactics that you refuse to indulge due to a false sense of integrity and morals, but I recall how you played Margot Verger in your own mission against Mason Verger.” Will gave her a pointed look. “An assignment that you ultimately failed.”
“I’m still seeing Margot Verger, actually,” Alana said with a sniff.
“If you falsify your feelings for someone, masked as affection, you gain a different set of knowledge. You gain intel, you gain trusted items or acquaintanceship, your level of scrutiny and suspicion is lowered, and you are allowed access to areas that an impartial person can’t.” Will reached beneath his chair and handed over a small envelope as he spoke –each word fell from lips impartially and with distinct distance.
Television shows often dramatized what a lot of money looked like –five hundred thousand dollars fit into a semi-large envelope rather than an entire briefcase. Alana accepted it from him and opened it, peeking inside.
“Love also ensures that when your persona dies, the person doesn’t attempt to seek you out. They mourn you and move on, rather than a spurned lover they may try to track down. The more sudden and jarring the break, the more assurity there is that they won’t ever try to find you because you no longer are,” he continued as she counted.
“And of course your empathy allows you to reflect their emotions back onto them seamlessly, as though they were your own feelings,” she agreed once she was finished counting. “Tell me, is it really all fake? Every single mission? Every single emotion?”
He knew what she was referring to, and he was barely able to suppress a smile at her pointed expression. Will stood, unable to stand the heat on the back of his legs, and he sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets.
“If you want me to better convey genuine affection in our dealings, you have to pay extra,” he said, and he walked away, sliding his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose.
-
January 9, 2017
Hannibal Lecter was just as tall and broad as his picture. Will slunk along the production set and observed from a distance, a hand snaking its way into someone’s back pocket to retrieve their wallet. It was a busy day, to his understanding, everyone running every which way with props, costumes, and makeup brushes. The director was a paunchy man with a beer gut to rival a barfly, and Will had to dodge his wild gestures and jabbing just to nab the walkie-talkie at his hip.
Even amongst all of the chaos, though, the target remain infallible. He stood with calm repose on the set, watching everything with a placid expression. His eyes were deep-set, and he maintained a level of calm that was as impressive as it was unearthly.
Will snagged a passport from the clutch in a chair, and he slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket, watching as the scene was redone over and over and over again. Even as the child complained to their mother that their lines were no fun; even as the set director grabbed his hat and bit into the brim, Hannibal Lecter maintained poise. Will lurked alongside the snack table and took a bite of a donut, chewing thoughtfully.
“Cut! God, fuck, there should be a fucking word stronger than fuck!”
The director threw his hat and clipboard onto his chair before he stormed away, curses spewing from his mouth in a torrent of fury. Will tracked that before he looked back to the scene, studying the way in which Hannibal remained unimpressed, even with that. He took another bite of the donut, then stowed it away within someone’s small messenger bag.
“Let’s take a ten,” the assistant said dolefully, and a shrieking whistle sounded. Will allowed the crowd of people to shift him along, making room at the break table for frustrated and ultimately irritated workers.
He felt their annoyance like stinging nettle on his shins, so he turned away.
Hannibal Lecter stood just three inches away.
“Caught you,” Hannibal breathed, and he snatched Will’s arm in a vice-like grip.
Will couldn’t have said if it was the surprise at being snuck up on, or if it was the feeling of someone actually laying hands on him, but instinct preceded reason. He twisted his wrist and stepped just beneath Hannibal’s arm, turning them so that he was flush against his back, Hannibal’s arm twisted and taut between them.
It happened in a matter of two seconds, but it drew everyone’s attention. They were surrounded by gawking onlookers, the assistant director, other actors, then the furiously approaching security guards.
“Caught you,” Will whispered into Hannibal’s ear.
“Alright, you’ve made your point; let him go,” Hannibal Lecter’s manager said. He was a sniffly sort of man with a hawkish nose and a sneer to his lip –he’d been a child actor that wouldn’t let anyone forget it.
Will hesitated only a second before he released Hannibal’s wrist and let him go.
“Hannibal-”
“Frederick, I want you to search him thoroughly. Security, please-” Hannibal gestured with his sore arm towards Will, his top lip curled into a snarl “-I witnessed this man steal numerous items from the various employees here. A wallet, a walkie-talkie, a passport, and I believe someone’s phone and someone’s ipod.”
Security was just as baffled as the rest of the onlookers, and Will bore their surprised and horrified expressions remarkably well. He reached into his pocket and withdrew someone’s wallet, tossing it back to them.
Frederick Chilton was fuming. “You stole from the people here?”
“Yes.”
“You willingly admit that you stole from us?” he pressed.
“Yes.”
Security was inching closer, although they looked far more stressed than sure of themselves. Will twitched a shoulder into a shrug, then withdrew an ipod, tossing it to the owner.
“Wh-what are you going to say in your defense!” Frederick blustered.
“I wanted to show you how poor your security is here,” Will replied. At their stunned silence, he continued, “My name is Thomas Harris. The head of your department hired me to become Hannibal Lecter’s bodyguard. I was tasked with assessing the security situation here, and I’ve drawn my conclusions.”
“Which are?” Frederick demanded.
“Your security is poor at best. I was able to retrieve these items with relative ease within forty-five minutes, and I had access to wealthy and vulnerable persons who could have easily come to harm. The only person that noticed my behavior was the target of interest, my new charge.”
Surprise was a funny thing to witness; he hated seeing the way their eyes shifted from suspicion, the whites far more exposed as they opened their eyes wide like they could somehow see more if they just looked harder. He tracked the shift of slack mouths pursing or pressing flat, cheeks and necks reddening in shame and embarrassment. There was a vulnerability to it, to realize someone had been made into a fool.
“I’m calling the director,” Frederick said with a snarl.
“Please do. They have my phone number and background information.”
There was a general chaos of confusion as Frederick stormed away, leaving in his wake an unruffled Will Graham and a mildly intrigued and amused Hannibal. Will returned the items to their respective owners, then stood beside Hannibal with his hands tucked into his pockets.
“A bodyguard,” Hannibal began pleasantly.
“Your bodyguard, sir.”
“Yet you found it necessary to harm me.”
Will noted the way his inflection and tone didn’t change; it was difficult to judge his level of displeasure. He studied his mouth a moment longer as it lay in an apathetic line, then looked across the way where Frederick raged and ranted into his phone.
“I had complete control over the manner of pressure I’d put onto your wrist. I wouldn’t have seriously injured you.”
“If this is about Mason Verger, it’s unnecessary,” Hannibal informed Will. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“I don’t have an opinion on the nature of my being here. Whether you can take care of yourself or not, I was hired to be your bodyguard, therefore I am your bodyguard.”
Will watched Frederick pace, and he counted the steps. Four forward; about face, three back. It was uneven, and it made him feel lopsided.
“If you suppose they’re going to pay you well, they won’t. Frederick Chilton is my manager, and he’s a shrewd businessman,” Hannibal Lecter said.
Will glanced to his jaw, then back to watching the crowd “Money isn’t a concern for me.”
“Not fond of eye contact?” Hannibal asked.
“I don’t need eye contact to do my job.”
“I don’t trust a man that doesn’t make eye contact with me.”
Will forced himself to look into Hannibal’s eyes as he said, “You don’t have to trust me for me to do my job.”
Hannibal’s mouth twitched, although it was hard to tell if it was supposed to be a smile or a snarl. He looked away and watched Frederick pace, his voice rising sharply in pitch.
“What do you mean it’s my fault this happened?!”
“You didn’t tell them that I put a jelly donut in Frederick Chilton’s bag,” Will said.
Frederick snapped the phone shut and stormed over to the messenger bag. In his anger, he threw his things into it in rapid succession; books, laptop, memos, papers, and folders.
Hannibal’s mouth twitched again. “I thought it a lovely snack for him to enjoy later.”
Judging by the redness in Frederick’s cheeks and the mild disarray of his hair, Will wouldn’t call the upcoming meltdown lovely by any means, but it was funny none-the-less.
Chocolate icing and raspberry jelly smudged and smeared into his books and electronics was naturally a messy thing to clean up, after all.