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[abrightboy]

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[abrightboy]

“It was…” Suffocating. Terrifying. A relief. He hates him. He wishes he could hate him. “Just like I remembered. Like I never left.” He looks at Will. “I was visiting him regularly. From when I was eleven until I broke it off when I was twenty-one. Every week, except when I was at boarding school.”

[empathicfault]

'Just like I remembered' is about what Will expected to hear, and he can fill in the silence for himself. He's well acquainted with that swirl of emotions that shouldn't coexist together.

But hearing about how much Malcolm saw The Surgeon-- "They let you visit him from 11 years old on? The son who turned him in?" Will's eyebrows are raised. "He must've pulled something to manage that."

[abrightboy]

"He lived in my head. I asked to see him. I wanted to know how that... amazing dad I had could have done such horrible things to innocent people. How could this loving, doting father leave the house to go be a monster. I didn't know then about..." He takes a breath. "There were things I started to remember after I returned to New York. Fragments of memories. Things that... he did. To me. But I was completely unaware of them then. I just wanted to figure him out. How he fooled us. What he really was. If any of it had been real. My mother didn't want me to see him. She'd promised him that he would never see any of us again, but. I had... problems. Maybe she thought if I could see something in that cell... then maybe... I don't know. But in the end she let me go."

[empathicfault]

So not Martin's doing, probably. Just likely a terrible decision. People made those all the time. "And did it help your...problems, at all?"

[abrightboy]

"I really don't know," Malcolm admits. "Shortly before I started seeing him again, the string of child psychologists my mother was parading me through ended up at the door of Dr Gabrielle Le Deux. I had been nonverbal for a couple of months. She was the first person to... get through that.... it was like my emotions were so big they shut me down. And so I started seeing her regularly and I started talking again and we were working through everything that happened with my father... I know she didn't think seeing him was a good idea either, but I think she also put it out there with my mother that giving me some control over my life would be beneficial to my healing. Maybe she meant choosing what school I wanted to go to or what sports I wanted to do, but... well. I wanted the prison visits."

[empathicfault]

Will nods through the explanation. He can see how it'd happen, just- he feels frustrated, hearing that. He's not entirely sure why, but he knows the reason isn't far.

His next question has him looking at the table instead of Malcolm's eyes. His voice is quiet and soft. "Can I ask...what it was you remembered when you came back? Was that the chloroform, or something else?" Will remembers stolen seconds, lights flashing in front of his face, and repeated words that he still can't quite clarify. The fact that they found bits of his missing time didn't make the rest of it appear. Anything could've happened.

[abrightboy]

"The chloroform, yeah. And... the night I called the police... the night I found the girl in the box... I thought they were the same night. When the police came and took him, I told them about her, but when they looked, she wasn't there and I never understood how that was possible. Everyone told me I imagined her, but I was sure I didn't. They thought I saw pictures in his office or... or he said something that put the image in my head but I knew she was real. When I came back to New York, I started having more intense nightmares about her and I started remembering very small snippets of a camping trip my father took me on with another serial killer he mentored and the girl in the box. There was probably at least a week between the night I found her and the night I called the police. I'll probably never know exactly how long for sure. But eventually I pieced together most of what happened on the camping trip. They took us up there to get rid of both of us," Malcolm explains.

[empathicfault]

"You made it through, and she didn't," he murmurs. "And whatever happened in between was your father making up for the 'camping trip' not going to plan."

Will looks thoughtful for a long moment, playing with the cuffs of his sleeves as he turns over the situation in his mind and what he wants to say about it. "There was a point when Hannibal told me that his compassion for me was 'inconvenient'. Maybe your father found feelings for you he didn't know he had? And had to compensate for them."

[abrightboy]

“He did tell me he couldn’t go through with it,” Malcolm says. “Eventually, he admitted it. But… I also thought the girl in the box had to be dead. He wouldn’t admit she even existed at all. But… he let her go. He let her go because she gave him leverage over a power broker that could help him survive if he was ever held to account for his crimes and that day came sooner than later, though he wouldn’t have known it then. Got him a cushy cell in a hospital prison, not gen pop at Rikers or the federal death penalty.”

His eyes light a bit. “I found her. I found her and we talked.” He pauses. “She remembered me. She saw me when I saw her. She called me the boy in the basement. Her name’s Sophie. We’re still in touch.”

[empathicfault]

She was alive. There were so few times when the situation gave way to living survivors that Will actually smiles to hear about it. Regardless of the reasons, it still feels like a miracle.

"That's...I'm glad," he says, sincerely. "I can't say I expected it. That's never happened to me, except-" Except Abigail. His smile fades. "Just once. And the killer rectified his 'mistake' shortly afterwards."

He shakes his head, very much trying to clear it of shattered ceramic and carotid spray. "Was Sophie able to get her life back together after all that? Sounds like she's...okay." Or at least okay-ish.

[abrightboy]

“She became a veterinarian,” Malcolm tells him with a fond smile. “One person who isn’t my father probably would have wanted to kill her, but…” a beat and his expression wavers (Ainsley with a knife; Ainsley covered in blood spatter), “He’s dead. So she’s safe.”

[empathicfault]

He notices the waver and considers. There's no downside to kindness here, and they have all the time in the world.

So he stamps down his initial instinct and smiles wanly back. "We're hitting each other's buttons. We should probably stop doing that. Or at least tread carefully. But I'm glad to hear she's safe. And that you can stay in touch."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm breathes out a smile.

“I’m not sure that I’m opposed to having mine pushed. Maybe that’s part of purging them.”

[empathicfault]

"You think so?" Will seems less optimistic, but he's not going to disagree. Hmmm... "Okay, so maybe a careful approach isn't a bad idea. But since I'm bad at gauging that, I'll just do my best."

He is very much not a therapist, after all - he just tends to read them. "So I'm curious who it was that was a threat to Sophie, and why it bothers you that he's dead. Is that...something you want to talk about?"

[abrightboy]

“It… doesn’t bother me that he’s dead. He’s the power broker that got my father his deal. He was a despicable man that used people and disposed of them. He was threatening my family. He framed me for murder. …It bothers me that my little sister stabbed him to death and I cut up his body and disposed of it to protect her,” Malcolm admits uncomfortably.

[empathicfault]

Ah, it's the powerful man he'd heard about when they met. Will licks at his lips and looks up. "I haven't told you about Mason Verger, have I? Heir to the Verger Meatpacking Company. A pure sadist. Tortured his sister. Ruined people's lives for fun. He had enough money and power to keep his whims constantly catered to. Sounds very similar to this man. Hannibal didn't get on with him."

He shrugs, as if that's not a death sentence.

"I came home one day to find Mason there, high as a kite and slicing off parts of his face at Hannibal's request. He was feeding the 'meat' to my dogs. And I let him, by that point. I had seen enough."

He leans forward a little, staring at Malcolm as if trying to understand. "I tell you that story because I want you to know where I'm coming from when I ask- why does it bother you that your sister killed him and you cleaned it up? For someone outside of the law, someone despicable and powerful and threatening people...what else could you have done?"

[abrightboy]

"I could have shot him. I was pointing a gun at him. ...I told him we were going to arrest him. I wanted to arrest him. We found his secret offices, his secret books. Let his secrets out to destroy him. He laughed in my face. He didn't laugh for long."

He shrugs a shoulder, then looks at Will. "I'm not a killer. I barely know who I am sometimes, but that much is... foundational."

[empathicfault]

Will nods, looking away from Malcolm to think for a moment. "I thought it was for me, too," he says, more to himself than anything.

He shakes his head. That's water very much under the bridge now. "So, do you feel bad because you couldn't shoot him? You had to 'make' your sister do it? Or is it something else?"

[abrightboy]

“I don’t know whether not shooting him was a mistake or not, but… right after she did it, she sort of… snapped out of it. And she didn’t know what happened. So… I told her I did it. I told her I did it and then I got rid of the body. And eventually she remembered and she was angry with me. For ‘taking it away from her’. For trying to… steal her thunder, I guess. She didn’t have my hangups, it turns out, about being like my father. And he’d already gotten in her head about it. Maybe I regret listening to him and disposing of the body at all. We should have called the police. We could have cobbled a self defence claim together. But he was there, in my ear, telling me what to do and I did it and I knew better.” He nods grimly. “I should have known better. But the deeper the hole for us, the better for him. He wanted us to keep needing him,” Malcolm says.

He looks at Will.

“Where do you think it went off the rails for you?”

[empathicfault]

Will stops moving again, listening quietly as Malcolm explains. And yes, that he can understand. Will was frequently in the position of not wanting to give the monster more leverage. And Will's never had any siblings, but he can understand not wanting one to be all gung-ho about murder. He nods vaguely in agreement.

He's still sorting through all of it when Malcolm asks Will about going off the rails, and it takes him a moment to even realize what's being asked. When he does, he lets out a snort of a laugh. "There was no single one moment. Hannibal was careful. It was a series of compromises, if anything. I should've gotten off the ride at the start."

His head tilts to the side as he recalls the Hobbs family house. "It started with the first case we were on together. He called to warn the killer, just before we headed over to ask some questions. It was- you know, I got thrown off the force for not using lethal force when necessary? But-" He takes a deep breath in. "When we made it to the house, the killer was holding his daughter hostage, and he slit her throat, and I had my gun in my hand, and- I took the shot. I saved her life, that's how people put it." He sort of grimaces. "It just kept sliding downhill from there."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm gives him a small, sympathetic smile.

"I've never used lethal force," he confesses. "They call me reckless."

[empathicfault]

Will's smile in return is a little lost. "Well, keep it up. It might've been that day that sealed my fate."

He closed his eyes and sighs for a moment, rubbing his hands together as if cold. "The Mason Verger incident was about halfway through. I tried to kill Hannibal a number of times after that, thinking that would purge me of the desire afterwards. But- it just settled it in further. Like a stray I'd been feeding, it stuck around. Obvious, really."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm had always felt like, if he started down that path, it would consume him.

“Well. Until the very end. I still don’t know if my father survived the stabbing.”

[empathicfault]

"And you haven't gone back, because time will resume and you'll know, then. Right?"

He's not trying to be accusatory, it's just how he would've handled it. "You could...make it a part of your Warden Deal. To make sure your father survives." To try and save himself, if nothing else.

[abrightboy]

"I promised my deal to my inmate," Malcolm tells him. "And I'm not sure I would..." He trails off. "It seems like a waste of a miracle to skate away from the consequences of my actions. To... use something that could help people to save a bad man from the consequences of his actions."