Chapter Text
Another crime scene, a married couple are the victims. Will stands next to the woman's corpse and closes his eyes. He sees the silver pendulum in front of him, which immediately begins to move, making a pleasant vibrating sound. He waits for the pendulum to stop and opens his eyes. The crime scene disappeared, the sounds stopped around him.
He's standing outside on the street, and sees movement in the house. Without thinking, he moves and breaks the door, he sees a man hurrying down the stairs. He raises his gun, and there is only the victim in front of his eyes when he shoots.
"I shoot Mr. Marlow twice. Severing jugulars and carotids with near-surgical precision. He will die watching me taking what is his away from him. This is my design." He immediately turns to the woman's voice and shoots without thinking.
"I shoot Mrs. Marlow expertly through the neck. This is not a fatal wound, the bullet misses every arteri, she is paralyzed before it leaves her body. Which doesn't mean she can't feel pain, it just means she can't do anything about it. This is my design." He walks past the person lying on the ground and turns off the alarm system. Suddenly he hears a man's voice from the security system. The recognition is immediate. Will returns to the present for a moment.
"I need the incident riport from the home security company." He's serious, not looking at anyone. "This was recorded as a false alarm." He flips through the document. "There was a false alarm last week too. He tapped their phone." After reviewing the data and making sure that he was right, Will returns to the reconstruction. "He recorded Mrs. Marlow's conversation with the security company." In his reconstruction, Will raises a recorder to the alarm and, as the person from the company speaks, he plays last week's speech. "And this is when it gets truly horrifying for Mrs. Marlow."
A year later, the FBI academy, Quantico, Virginia
"Everyone has thought about killing someone, one way or an other. Be at your own hand or at the hand of God. Now think about killing Mrs. Marlow. Why did she deserves this? Tell me your design. Tell me who you are." Will finishes the lecture and starts to pack up, when a figure dressed in a suit appears in the room with a hunting ferret on his shoulder and hurries towards him.
"Mr. Graham. Special Agent Jack Crawford, I head the Behavioral Research Unit." Will doesn't even look at the man when, he just out of piliteness shakes his hand.
"We've met." Will simply says.
"Yes. We had..." He starts, but Will cuts him off.
"I still think the name of the museum is wrong, but I don't think that's why, you came, Jack. So get to the point if you may." He says as he walks out of the campus.
"Can I borrow your imagination?" Will looks at the man from behind his glasses, confused by the question.
"What for?" Will asks suspiciously.
"Eight girls abducted from eight different Minnesota campuses all in the last eight months." He starts explaining.
"I only heard about seven." Will says seriously. "When were you notified?"
"About three minutes before I entered your lecture." Jack says, and Will asks him a few questions that he already knew the answers to.
Of course, the FBI thinks they were kidnapped if there are no bodies, but that doesn't mean that, just that they're looking in the wrong place. By the time they get to Jack's office, he tells Will what he knows about the missing girls. The man hands Will a photo of a girl, while he stands in front of his board full of clues.
"Elise Nichols." Jack starts and tells Will when and where she disappeared. The profiler takes off his glasses so he can concentrate better.
"The past ones are already dead, don't you think? He is not keeping them around. Got himself a new one." He says sternly, but his words seem to have passed the man's ears.
That's the problem with the FBI, they always focus on a single case, they don't see the connections. Will looks over the board and takes a good look at the girls, all of whom have brown hair and brown eyes, and Jack also points out that they are all the same age and body type.
"He is like Willy Wonka, every girl he takes is a candy bar. And hidden amongst all those candy bars is the one true intended victim. Which if we follow thorugh our metafor is your golden ticket." Will explains.
"So is he warming up for his golden ticket or just reliving whatever it is he did to her." Jack says, but Will just rolls his eyes.
"Oh, the golden ticket won't be the first, actually she wouldn't be the last either, he would hide how special she is. I mean I would, wouldn't you?" The prodiler asks with his arms folded in front of him, then he turns to leave the place.
He already knows what the game is about and doesn't like it one bit, but of course one can't say no to Jack Crawford, so he can't do anything, Will needs to help Jack solve this one case. This is how they arrive in Duluth, Minnesota in the afternoon, where the last girl's parents live. Will just silently observes the room and the pictures and listens to the agent do his job until he notices something.
"How is the cat?" Will asks suddenly, which causes the parents to freak out, but in the end they give the answer he expected. When Jack calls him out, he's almost waiting for the man to scold him, but Will prevents him. "He took her from here, Jack! She took the train, she got home, fed the cat, and the guy took her away." As Will says this, the man raises his phone to his ear and calls out his entire team. "Can I see your daughter's room?" Will asks, and when the father takes him upstairs, he already knows that something is wrong. When they reach the stairs and he sees the cat scratching at one of the doors, he already has an idea what that wrong is.
Of course, the father didn't take it well that the profiler didn't want to let him see his daughter, but Will knew it will be better for him that way. In the end, thanks to Jack, he's left alone in the room with the girl's dead body. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The pendulum immediately appears and starts moving. Will can see his movements, as he throws himself on the girl and starts to strangle her, he sees a doe in the corner of his eye, but when he turns towards it, he is disturbed.
"You are Will Graham." Blinking wide, Will comes out of the reconstruction to catch a glimpse of an Asian woman, a creature like an otter, a vulture and a hyena. Of course, the woman who spoke immediately tries to chat with him, but as usual, Will isn't thrilled with this idea. "You are not real FBI?"
"I'm a special investigator." Will answers.
"Never been an FBI agent?" She asks in surprise.
"The screening procedures are quite strict." Says Will, and the girl smiles at this.
"They detect instability. You instable?"
"Maybe." Will says, but he doen't want to deal with the matter anymore, so when Jack and the rest of the team come in he goes to the window, and listens to them raise their ideas.
"That's medicine." He notes, when they start arguing that maybe the wound has antler welveth because it was killed by a deer. At his words, Jack looks at him like he's crazy.
"Do you think he wanted to heal her?"
"No! He wanted to undo what he did as much as he could, given that he had already killed her. Whatever he did to the others, he couldn't do it to her." The profiler finishes.
"Is she the golden ticket?" Jack askes, and Will almost laughs at that.
"No, it's an apology. He didn't respect her." Will says seriously.
"So who are we looking for Will?" Jack asks, and Will sighs.
"A doe." He tells Jack, then trys to leave the scene as quickly as possible. A few hours later, he's driving home in Wolf Trap, Virginia, when he sees a stray dog on the road. Will smiles and stops the car, he's not in a hurry, just trying to call the animal to him. He finally manages to save the poor thing, it has no collar and is covered in dirt. Will takes it home with him and, as he have done with all his dogs, he washes it, then lets the other dogs out on his porch.
"Winston, they are the others. Others this is Winston." Will introduces the dogs to each other, then he sits down on the chair that is always there and sighs.
"We brought home a dog again." His voice sounds a little grumpy as it leaves his mouth, but he just hums in approval. "You know, it's okay, but again, it's not a hunting dog. You know how long have I wanted a hunting dog, Will." He closes his eyes, but Will opens them right away and strokes the head of the nearest dog.
"Calm down, William, the first hunting dog we find will be yours." He chuckles after the answer, with which he manages to calm down his other half, who shares his mind and body with him.
"You are an idiot!" He laughs with Will's voice.
"Both of us are." Will shakes his head.