#i remember him showing me this design when i was buildin my own shadow design 🖤

[fightevilandthengetblownup]

My Design VII

—

Will is in the middle of a lecture - discussing the influence of childhood experiences on the behavioural bias of profilers, something most of the class was up in arms about the moment he suggested their own experiences may cause a break in a case, or the misdevelopment of a necessary profile - when the lights are thrown on and Jack is stood in the doorway.

“We’ve got her.”

The words send a chill directly down his spine as the head of the BAU scare the students from their chairs. He hopes that the she isn’t who his stomach is telling him it is. That the echo of a laugh, in his head or from the shadows in the curve of his theatre - Will can’t fully tell, that genuine and raw laugh he had not heard in months made him break out in a cold sweat.

“Will, did you hear me? We’ve finally picked her up, some abandoned house in Duluth we got a report her car was parked at.” Jack’s rough voice cut through the laugh, the self-satisfied grin on his face as he clapped the smaller man on the back made Will’s fingers twitch. “We finally captured Joanna fucking Harvelle.”

“Congratulations, Jack.” He heard the words leaving his mouth, heard the words formed in his voice, but did not feel them coming out. It was as if his body moved without his permission, spoke without his say so, and followed the gloating man down the corridors, all while Will himself floated along in a fog inside of himself. Standing and then being swept under the swell of the river in his mind. “I suppose this means you will be wanting your file back.”

“Not just yet, we still need to create a profile of her. You will still be needed for this.” Jack responded sharply, leading the pair of them towards one of the interrogation rooms, holding the door to the viewing side of the mirror open for Will to walk through. “Alana is currently conducting the initial interview.”

As Will stepped into the room, his eyes darted rapidly between the scene through the glass, and the tall, well dressed man watching in the darkness already. The monster and the angel both demanding his attention as he drew to a stop a few feet into the space, both with so much blood upon their hands that if it could it would drown them all, yet only one was wearing hand cuffs strapped to the table top.

As Jack shut the door behind them, blocking out the light from the corridor and leaving the three men in the almost darkness created by the low glow of the fluourescent light in the interrogation room, Will felt the ragged breathing of the stag behind his neck as he fell into line between Hannibal and Jack.

“Continue with the interrogation, Dr. Bloom. The last one is here.” The older man’s voice crackled through the intercom as Alana poured herself a glass of water.

Through the glass, Will felt more than saw the woman freeze mid question, hands drawing back across the table as much as possible with the clinking of the chain. The blonde drew back from the comfortable slump she had been in, as she turned in her chair to face the mirror instead of the other woman.

“Joanna, Joanna, what were you saying?” Alana spoke in the same gentle voice Will remembered from his own time in that chair, hands leaning forward on the shelf of the glass as he leant in, eyes focussed on the brown dancing about the mirror, searching. “You were talking about a man, someone called Ash?”

The blonde did not apper to respond, eyes focussed upon the mirror and rising to her feet as she did so, chained wrists keeping her from being able to approach. Her eyes would occasionally stare directly into his own as they travelled around the mirror. Those fleeting seconds, he felt his own breath stop, caught and held as his eyes were.

“Joanna?”

“Sorry Doc, but I really ain’t interested in talkin’ to you anymore.”

“What?”

“I mean, this small talks been fun - reminiscing ‘bout my childhood, my life growin’ up without my Dad, friends I used to have, all that jazz. But really, what’s that goin’ to give you that you don’t already know ‘bout me? Nadda, jack fuckin’ shit.”

Will could hear the amusement leeching through her voice, could see her as she saw him even through the glass, even though she could not pin point exactly where he was. See the way she was not the one caught in the spiders web of the FBI, but that the FBI were the ones trapped in hers. She had not been caught, she had come here on her own free will in one way or another.

“Please, Joanna, sit down so we can resume-”

“Alana, was it? Sorry Alana, but I’m not interested in answerin’ your stupid questions any more. Tell that asshole voice to send in someone fun.” The way she seemed to purr the word made the hairs on the back of Will’s neck stand up, as his bloody angel smiled towards him. He could feel the goosepimples bloom along his neck, into his hair and up his arms, tracing where her fingers once had trailed. His breath hitched as he watched her sink back into the chair, one denim clad leg crossed over the other, the muddy boots on her feet the same he remembered by his front door, smile growing wider as she looked across at the table to the peturbed woman. “Get me one of them from behind there-” The blonde jerked her head towards the mirror without looking away from the other woman. “-so you all could learn a real thing or two ‘bout interrogatin’, Doc.”

Will could see the way Alana’s eyes flickered across to the mirror, before Jack buzzed through his approval to the woman. The dark haired psychiatrist rose from her position at the table and exited the room, joining the men moments later, unsteady on her feet.

“Alana, I thought that was going well.”

“It was until you spoke up. Something just… clicked in her, did you see? She suddenly changed from open and friendly and very much a typical midwest girl, to something…truly unsettling.”

He saw.

“Perhaps we give her what she wants.” Hannibal’s voice cut through Will’s fog, like a wave of ice water poured over him and jolting him back from where he was leaning against the mirror, forehead pressed against the cool glass dark eyes piercing through to the hard brown of the bloody murderess’. “Jack, if I may?”

“Sure thing, see if you can get a guage on her from inside.” The head of the BAU waved a hand in agreement before the other moved out the door. From the corner of his eye, Will could see the stag padding along behind the monster as the door closed behind him.

The pair entered the interrogation room shortly after, and Will found himself pressing against the glass again as the blonde woman’s posture barely shifted at all at the monster’s presence. Her hands remained on her knee as she surveyed the other, rudely ignoring the hand held out in greeting by the psychiatrist.

“Damn, I was hopin’ that the cute one would come in.”

“My apologies, Miss Harvelle,” Hannibal sat calmly down opposite her, his elbows and arms resting in a careful mimickry of informality as he stared across the table at the woman. “If you would prefer, we can have another psychiatrist speak with you.”

“Nah, that’s okay, I had meant to speak with you face to face one day, Mr. Lecter.” The title was sneered across the tabletop from one to the other, the smirk on her face not shifting as the blonde woman rested calmly in her seat as if she was not chained. “I had expected it to be at the end of my gun, however.”

“Charming,” Hannibal’s voice was like silk, and Will found himself sucking in a breath as we watched the pair speak. “Do you speak with many persons in such positions?”

“Not nearly as many that deserve it.”

“And do you believe that I would deserve it for that expectation?”

“I believe you already know the answer to that question..”

Will found himself smiling despite himself as the woman’s response, the small smirk on her lips and jiggle of her folded foot showed a clear lack of concern to the monster that sat across from her. ‘I kill things worse than him for breakfast.’ He could hear the words clear as day, whispered in his ear as she raised a blonde brow across the table at the doctor.

“Well then, perhaps a different question for us to start with then.” The psychiatrist leant back in his own chair, hands folding over one another as he stared back at the woman. “Your victims-”

“The monsters.”

“Monsters?”

“Or demons, sometimes angels if they’ve gone too far off track.”

“Angels? So you are religious. A Christian?”

“Hell fuckin’ no! God left the buildin’ years ago. You’d know all ‘bout the grace of goodness leavin’ you behind long ago, wouldn’t you Mr. Lecter?”

The two other viewers appeared to shift uncomfortably, at the woman’s words - whether from the godlessness or the words echoing the suggestions that Hannibal was anything but a calm, wellmannered doctor - and Will could almost feel their eyes dart to him at that moment. For his part, Will could hear the laughter again, and watching the pair in the other room, he saw the smirk on his bloody angel’s mouth grow wider still, laughing silently, mockingly, rudely at Hannibal.

“In my line of work, it is a terrible thing to be forced to stare into the abyss that is the world’s darkest minds and actions.” The foreign man replied back calmly, as the pair beside Will appeared to begin whispering to one another. “Such a terrible thing to stare into the void-”

“And the void stares right back, yeah yeah, very fuckin’ poetic there. How has no one called you out on your dramatic as shit persona yet?” Joanna Harvelle interrupted and snapped back, pulling her hands as if to cross her arms before being jerked from completing the move by the chains loop on the table. Groaning, she stood up instead and sat atop the end of the metal frame instead of back in her seat, facing straight across at the mirror instead of acknowledging the other man. Speaking directly through the mirror, as if to Will’s companions, a pleading tone drawing into her words as she dropped one hand and managed to draw her fingertips through the ends of her hair. “Really, how has no one noticed this yet? Is this whole fuckin’ Bureau filled with idiots or somethin’? The man speaks and I feel like I’n stuck in a goddamn Shakespeare play every second of it, and ya’ll don’t question the clear flare for the dramatics and theatrics at all?”

This time Will did not bite down the responding laugh her words brought out as his two colleagues gasped and growled at the affronts. Hannibal’s own eyes flashed for a moment as his hands shifted to rest the other way around. Joanna for her part seemed to ignore the psychiatrist from that point on, sitting fully atop the table top with her legs crossed like a child in school, and hands in her lap.

“Truly, I expected better from ya’ll. I really, really did. Guess it don’t take much to get a badge these days-” She didn’t stop the laugh that came up then, the sounds filling Will’s ears with the warm sound that he had craved to hear for months. “-though I will say I’ve managed to get a hold of a few in my time anyways.”

“Did she just admit to impersonating a Federal Agent?” Jack Crawford hissed, fist hitting violently into the window frame as he stared into the interview room.

“She did,” Alana replied, stepping a few feet away from the mirror itself, as if to distance herself from the blonde woman who appeared to still be mocking the psychiatrist, the Agency and the world itself on the table inside. “She also appears completely erratic, and all over the place. One second she talks of God, then demons or the Agency. It’s truly manic.”

“It’s not manic, it’s choreographed, it’s perfectly curated, it is so clearly designed and manipulated to impact each person that hears it. It’s beautiful and it is her design…” Will found himself replying, voice quiet as he leant into the cool glass, hand pressed against it beside him as if to reach forward to his bloody angel. He paid no mind to the concerned and furious looks the other two gave him.

“She is telling the truth and weaving a fiction at the same time, she is attacking each of you in your own way, with your own beliefs and truths thrust forward. She is accusing you of ignorance and arrogance, Jack - something no one elese is willing to do for you.” He found himself  drawing out of his mind, as if appearing before her, sat cross-legged and atop the metal tabletop right in front of her, her voice a warm tone filling his ears as he stroked her unseeing face. “She is accusing you of blindness, of being blinded by your lust and desires, Alana. First for me, and now for Hannibal. She sees you both.”

Alana appeared to flush and splutter, hands smoothing down the skirt of her pantsuit at his words, while Jack simply punched the wall again in frustration.

“What about Hannibal, then, Will? What is she saying behind it all to him?” Alana found her voice, slightly wavering and uncomfortable, however Will did not see that as he simply remained staring into the deep, dark eyes that saw right through to him. The murderess was staring directly at him, through the projection of him and into his eyes behind the mirror, as if knowing exactly where he was and that he was as drawn into her as she was him.

“She is teasing him. Taunting him to draw him out. The him that she is seeing, not the polished man he presents to us all.” His voice was barely above a whisper, eyes wide and pupils taking up almost all of his irises despite the light of the room. Will found himself sinking, drowning, overwhelmed by the depths he stared into, swallowed by the warmth and clarity he saw within them. “She wants to draw him into the light, to expose him, to make him forget the carefully crafter facade he shows.”

Looking into the room, Will found his eyes leaving hers between a blink to see the fury simmering within the psychatrist as the woman continued to ignore him in favor for staring through the mirror back at Will himself.

His shiny lure was luring them all in, and the dark smile that blossomed across her face made Will’s heart leap. His lure had caught her fish, and he could feel himself biting down on her hooks, unable to detach.

—

As he is shown along the corridors and through the barred gates, Will can barely control the jump the slam of the gates bring out as he is guided through to the therapy room. The orderly’s at each point avoid his gaze, remembering the time he had spent there in chains and a navy jumpsuit rather than in the jeans and flannel.

Will kept his eyes straight ahead, refusing to cower away from the distrusting eyes he passed, the comforting feel of the stream passing his legs with each wade forward towards the therapy room he would be meeting on the outside of the bars for once.

As the door was opened and Will sent through, he felt the suck of memory from being within the cold steel bars creeping up his spine, though the shift of the room’s look from the innocent’s perspective outside of the bars almost made him stumble down the stairs. Looking about the room, he was surprised to see the inmate he was there to see had not yet arrived, but one chair was sat facing the middle therapy cage.

Shrugging off his olive winter jacket over the back of the seat, Will approached the bars of the cage, hands wrapping around the bars. His own wrapped in response over his, the wild, dark eyes of his past self staring back into him in that moment. His darker self stared back at him, lips curling up on one side with the dark smile of a job well done, of the madness slowly taking over. The past him released one hold on the bar, hand reaching through to touch at his own face, hissing the words quietly “See you…”

The click of the doors at the far end of the room, the inmate’s end of the room started Will from the vision, hands still wrapped around the bars and frozen in the place he had lost himself. Taking two steps back towards the chair, hand touching the worn canvas of the jacket as he stood behind the wooden chair itself, Will could smell it the moment she entered the room in a waft of vanilla and chocolate as the breeze flowed from behind her.

He could see how free she was compared to his own experience in the place, how unaffected she was by the dank, and dark, and isolating nature of the clinical building.

Her hair was a matted birds nest around her face, the sharp edges hidden beneat the softness he knew her skin to be, as he knew she would not have been allowed a hairbrush since entering the FBI holding cells and then her transfer to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Her usually sunkissed glow was gone under the hard fluorescents of the therapy room and the lack of sunlight in the worn brick cells. She was further washed out by the navy jumpsuit that was required in the hospital, however the upperhalf of it was tied about her waist, showing off the skin of her arms, her neck, her clavicles, and scooped across her chest by the white wifebeater she wore underneath that his fingers twitched to reach for. To anyone else she may appear a mess, sallow and sickly; but he could see the reality this was exactly the misinterpretation she wanted projected around her.

He could see the way she barely reacted to the chains on her wrists and ankles, instead appearing at easy and playfully tugging and toying with the tied arms of the jumpsuit. She batted at the dark haired orderly that was leading her in, smiling widely at him as if playing. The orderly appeared to roll his eyes and hold tighter on the elbow in his grasp.

“Not so hard, hunny, don’t want to leave bruisin’ now…”

“Inappropriate commentary.”

“Fine, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.”

Will diverted his gaze as the pair walked to the cage, a small frown on his face as he rubbed the collar of his jacket rather than watch the bloody angel be locked up as he had been. There was the rattling of the cage’s gate, followed by the sliding sound of metal as the door was closed and the handcuffs removed. He found himself looking up as the orderly leant closer to the bars than his own memory reminded him they would, hands rubbing over the woman’s wrists for a moment longer than necessary before shooting Will an unidentifiable look. The stony look in the man’s bright blue eyes felt unsettling to him, as if the orderly could see right into his very mind.

Shaking his head slightly, Will shuffled his feet as the orderly moved back to stand against the wall behind the woman’s cage. The light streamed in from the window behind her, illuminating the nest of hair around her face like a halo as Joanna Harvelle stared across at him from her seat inside the white, rusty cage. She looked completely in control of the situation, legs crossed as she had the table top the last that he had seen her.

“Hey Will, missed you at the FBI.”

“I didn’t miss you.”

“Figured that you were behind the mirror, did you like my performance? That little psycho was so fuckin’ pissed off.”

“You mean Hannibal?” Will queried, pulling his assigned seat closer to her cage, well within the normal pissing range. His eyes darted behind the woman’s shoulder towards the orderly, however the other man didn’t respond to tell him to pull back away from the bars like the orderly’s used to. In fact, the orderly appeared to draw himself up straighter, as if his hackles were raised and glaring at Will like he was the threat in the room. “You were trying to upset him?”

“Not particularly, but it was fun to toy with him a bit. I didn’t like him last time I saw him, up close he’s even more..”

“Inhuman?”

The sound came again - that warm, rich, chocolatey laugh washing over him - as the woman shook her head. “I’d not call him that, he’s definitely just a human. Just a fuckin’ dark one.”

“Some would say that an apt description for you,” Will found himself replying, dragging his chair almost to the point he would touch the bars with his knees when he sat. Sinking into it, he leant forward, hand wrapping around the bars that separated them. “A fucking dark human.”

She laughed again, legs uncrossing as if his bloody angel’s wings were unfurling, as the blonde rose from ther bench to lean beside the bars near him. Will watched carefully, breath catching at the brush of her jumpsuit’s fabric against his knuckles. There was a sound, almost like a growl, from behind her but Will paid it no attention.

All of his attention was on the dark brown eyes staring down at him with a warmth from her laughter. His attention was on the dark shadow of himself he could see in the cage alongside her, the cold darkness of his past self’s eyes as they stared down at him behind her. The way the edges of reality and vision blurred in the streams of light from the large windows. Was the ghost of his past really there? The part of him he had been denying, the methodical, logical, cold and dark self that could match the darkness of her own. Was he really standing there, in his matching jumpsuit, hands trailing over the golden birds nest, down the pale flesh of her skin and arms, wrapped around her waist following the arms of her own suit? Was he trapped outside the cage, trapped inside the cage, or trapped inside her?

“Will? ….Will?”

The voice sounded close, as if he was standing over her and leaning into her. As if she was right beside him. His fingers were still around the bars, but to either side of her face as he’d risen to his feet again. He was staring down at her, the seven inches between them feeling closer as the empath found the dark version of himself smirking back at him before he blinked and it was gone. Blinking, Will found himself standing against the bars, one hand as close as they could to the woman’s face as she had taken a step back from the bars; the other was holding onto one of the sleeves of her jumpsuit, the fabric pulled taunt across the gap between them.

“I’m… I’m sorry, I don’t know..”

“Back from the bars!” The barked order from the dark haired man in white jerked Will back from the bars themselves, knocking the wooden chair and his jacket to the ground as he stumbled backwards. The orderly looked more threatening than the woman in the cage ever could, the glare almost as soulless and dark as the stag’s own. “Stay back from her, Will Graham.” His name sounded almost like a curse as he caught his footing.

“Is that really necessary?” The blonde questioned, sinking back onto the bench from where she has pressed up against it away from his grasping hand. Joanna appeared to relax as she turned to look at the orderly questioningly.

“Yes. Clearly.” The orderly snarled, arms crossed as he moved to stand beside the cage from against the wall.

Joanna laughed a little, though it sounded tighter than Will knew to be real, “Really really? Not like he’s goin’ to hurt me.”

“I don’t really bloody care right now.” The dark haired man hissed back, as Will noticed the man’s eyes did not move at all from where he was slowly getting himself back under control. “You’ve got one more minute, Mr. Graham, before we leave.”

“I’m sorry, I lost myself for a moment there. I’ll stay back, I promise.”

“See that you do.” The orderly remarked, edge in place as he moved back to his position by the wall. Will noticed the way the blonde’s head turned to follow him, an unreadably soft look on her face as she did so.

“So, we were talkin’ ‘bout the FBI… The interesting Mr. Lecter-” The blonde redirected the conversation at hand, legs crossed and hands poised holding onto each of her socked feet. She raised a brow at him as she spoke.

“Doctor. Dr. Lecter.”

“Ah, but he reacted so hilariously to being called Mr, didn’t he?” Joanna’s voice was filled with mirth again, the same smirk that had bloomed across her face in the interrogation room sparked across her now. “He’s not very good at understandin’ real people, is he? I’ve seen fake people do a much better job than he does. How he hasn’t been caught blows my mind.”

“He surrounds himself with people with unusual personalities and psyches. It’s hard to be seen as unusual by the unusual.” Will replied, resetting the chair again but not sitting.

Joanna raised her brow fully at his words. “And what about that lady doctor? She seemed very-”

“Dr. Alana Bloom is a very talented woman.”

“Very stupid you mean. Wasn’t a fan of playin’ nice with her particularly, but it bought time… And I got to play up the crazy a lil’ bit.” He found it odd how he did not react negatively to the slight against Alana. He would have fought the words from anyone else, or from anyone in the past, but hearing his angel speak seemed to set him free of that final shred of protectiveness. “She’s gotta be stupid.”

“How so?”

“ ‘A professional curiosity’ I think was the term she used…” The bloody grin was back, dark and full of danger, as the blonde looked back at him. Will froze at the term and the way she mimicked the woman’s voice almost flawlessly. “Or at least that’s what she said when we were left alone while that big bumblin’ boss went to go fetch you and the monster. Pretty stupid terms to hide behind - if she liked you she should have just said.”

“And if she didn’t?”

“Stupid. Like I said…”

Will could feel his heart in his throat at the simple phrasing, before the orderly approached him. The man appeared to glare for a moment at the cage, getting a shrug in response, before he held out the green jacket.

“Time’s up, Graham.”

“Yes, I guess, uh..”

“Time to go.” The dark haired man’s voice dropped a little, as if he was both speaking and whispering at the same time. A subtle shift in his pitch, but Will thought nothing of it as he nodded and pulled his coat on.

“Yes, time to go.” He heard himself parrot the words back, his eyes drawing away from the wide, cold blue ones in front of him to nod a final time at the caged bird. His caged angel, her wings clipped but not forgotten. Joanna appeared to look surprised, but only momentarilly as the orderly moved towards the cage. Will noticed the man forgot to clip her cuffs back into place before opening the cage door.

As Will began moving towards the visitor’s exit, he could hear the voices of the two in the quiet room despite the low, harsh tones.

“What on earth are you thinking, meeting with him again?!”

“Not really my choice to say no, hun.”

“You can still fight it! You have to stay away from him, he’s dangerous! You know he’s in love with you right?”

“Don’t be silly…”

“You know you know, Jo.”

Will frowned slightly as he left, the words ringing in his ears as he made his way along the cold corridors alone. The other orderly’s he passed all were one’s he had seen before and avoided his gaze as well. Not that he was looking at them. His eyes were still focussed on the image of her hair and the halo around her as she stood over him. His ears were still filled with the orderly’s words ‘you know he’s in love with you you know you know’ you know he’s in love with you you know you know you know he’s in love with you you know he’s in love with you know he’s in love with you…’ as he padded along the stone hallways.

As he reached the main doors to the building, pen in hand to sign his time out, he was shocked back to reality by the cane across his knuckles.

“Will Graham. Care for a cup of tea?”

---

"Please, sit. Make yourself at home.” Dr. Fredrick Chilton said, a hand waving towards the seats opposite the desk. As the administrator rounded his desk, sinking into the suple leather of his Chesterfield desk chair, the dark haired psychiatrist smiled smugly across at him. “Again.”

“This was never my home, Fredrick, just an unfortunate living arrangement.”

“Oh of course it wasn’t, I never intended to suggest-”

“Please, let’s not insult either of our intelligence.”

“Yes, you do think quite highly of yours, don’t you, Will?”

Will found himself holding back a sneer at the other’s comments, as he sat in the chair opposite the doctor. He had never enjoyed the psychoanalysis that the well-put together man had tried to apply to him - the unusual and unconvential methods, as well as the rudimentary at best interest to understand his psyche rather than just place a title upon him that Chilton chose already, not endearing the man or their time together to Will at all.

He could feel the twitch of his lips, that other self he saw in the cage, and sometimes in flashes in a mirror or the dark reflection of a black screen - the shining flat screen angled to face the both of them at once showing the sneer blooming across that Other Will’s face, eyes black and dark as it stared back at him - but forced the look to remain on the other’s and not his own.

“What do you make of my newest patient? I heard a rumour you were due to write the profile for her before now.”

“I’d much rather hear your thoughts, Fredrick, being the trained professional after all.”

“I may have said there was no word currently available to apply for yourself on the stand; however that is far more the truth for that woman.” Fredrick Chilton leaned back in his chair, the slight squeak of the oil-deprived springs at the movement sounding through the room as the TV screen flashed on. The inside of a cell, the blonde inmate laying on the lumpy mattress with her jumpsuit off and simply the wifebeater and underwear made Will’s eyes flash wider momentarially. The doctor smirked slightly, leaning forward in his chair again as he swivelled to look at the screen. “Truly a sight to behold in this facility, isn’t it?”

“I don’t recall you having any policy regarding clothing.”

“I have thought to implement one lately, but..” The smirk shifted almost into a leer as the dark haired doctor poked at the screen with one finger. “Some of the orderly’s may just object if I did, you see.”

Will could feel his teeth grinding together at the other’s words, leaning back in his own chair as if disinterested in the image upon the screen. From this angle he could see the dark reflection over the top of the grainy video feed, eyes black and mouth twisted into a fierce, disgusted snarl as if reacting to the other man’s words how Will would not allow himself to. The dark recesses of his mind reflected in the glass surface in a way that he did not yet feel comfortable acknowledging, comfortable accessing, comfortable being yet.

“Is your only observation to do with her clothes, Fredrick? Sounds like an ethics violation waiting to happen should the wrong person hear.”

“Of course not, just thought I would prepare you for the footage.” The psychiatrist let out a laugh as he turned away from the screen to look back at Will. “She speaks to herself in the cell frequently, showing clear signs of audiatory delusions and potential schitzophrenia. However in the same way, she has spoken at length regarding seeing monsters such as vampires and werewolves, and demons and angels. The judeo-christian overtones of her delusions suggests an openness to belief and faith, to seeing more in the world than there is-”

“A rather crude example-”

“Perhaps then you would appreciate more the elements of sociopathy demonstrated instead - she frequently attempts to manipulate the orderly’s and the conversations of her interviews to create a sense of empathy in her target. To create a false connection without any truth or genuine desire on her part.”

Will could see the reflection snarling at those words, the suggestion of them as Chilton took a sip from his coffee mug, eyes focussed back upon the fuzzy screen as Joanna Harvelle appeared to stand from her seat and the cell door slide open. The dark eyes of the reflection flashed, the woman’s face appearing within them as she stood and approached the door itself.

“Two appointments in one day?”

“What?”

“Is she due to have a second interview today?”

The pair stared in confusion at the screen as the woman appeared to bounce in position a few times, her hair bouncing in white waves about her on the greyscale screen. The cell door was fully opened, and Chilton frowned to himself as the dark haired orderly from earlier entered the cell.

The reflection’s look transformed into one of fury, Will finding his own expression drawing into a muted version of it as the imges continued. The woman’s arms went around the shoulders of the orderly, in a way completely unethical and inappropriate for a hospital employee to interact with a patient. His bloody angel was wrapped up in arms, and the pair’s heads tilted to one another before the screen froze and flickered to black.

The doctor hit at the screen twice before the picture returned, and with it a flurry of movement from the administrator to the telephone and clomping out of his office with the clink of his cane.

Will had seen the reflection, his dark past self snarling angrilly for a long moment in that black screen, before it was swallowed up by the image of the empty cell. His angel gone again from his grasp, vanishing somewhere in the blackness of the seconds, disappearing from within his eyes.