slightlyoffchilt | - IC CONTACT POST FOR MASKORMENACE -

If none of this true, show me your basement. I can go alone. I can also call a handful of coworkers to come with me. I'd prefer not to bother anyone for a search warrant on a Friday evening, though. Prove me wrong. I would very much like for you to prove me wrong. I have changed a lot, Frederick. Have you?

Do you know who Curt Connors was, Will? No, of course you don't, because he was a man who honestly needed to benefit from someone's compassion. He wasn't a sadist. He had manifested a severe identity dissociation, and his more brutal personality changed physical form. An uncontrollable form, a predator. He didn't want to kill anyone. I created the imPort Containment Center for people like Curt Connors.

You will never know how I have changed. What I had to suffer. You know none of it, because your first and last impulse is to suckle the killer. Never the victim.

I knew Curt. He bought mealworms from my shop. Nice guy. I can't help but notice my tendency to suckle killers is a complaint from you only when it doesn't work in your favor. Not that it matters. I'm here because of Abigail, not Crane.

Even more condemning that you knew him and didn't aid him.

You misunderstand. Unless you're so casually cruel as to employ the euphemism "not in my favor" to mean "tortured thereby under the hand of the individual in question"?

If you don't think that Crane hasn't already manipulated you through merely the idea of Abigail, then I retract my prior statement. You have changed. And not for the better.

Edited 2015-06-13 04:45 (UTC)

No. When you told me about my encephalitis. When we made our deal. Did I not suckle you then? This still is not about Crane. THIS IS NOT ABOUT CRANE. He isn't manipulating me like you seem convinced he is, and you're not going to make me second guess that. He was never my friend. We were never close. He's not some substitute for Hannibal in my eyes, if that's what you're thinking. I went back to therapy with him. He hurt Abigail, to use your words, in front me. He hurt her because of me, actually. How could you expect me to change for the better?

No one could be a substitute to Hannibal, Will. Wasn't that his grand gesture? That's not what I meant. But you will, you do, connect to him. Like you do to all the psychotic sadists.

And there it is. Right there. You went back to therapy with him. This is why I will not engage you in public from hence on.

I cannot. I'm not your artillery victim like the rest of them.

[HE DID NOT GET GUTTED IN HANNIBAL LECTER'S KITCHEN WHILE BOTH FREDS WERE TOTALLY OKAY FOR THIS

So many things pop to mind. Assertions, corrections, to Will's thinking. Then he hits what basically reads like he's being disowned, and he starts thinking up what sounds like excuses. He'd sat on this information until he felt he absolutely no longer could because of how poorly it might come across and now...he knows the look of a stray dog that was born in the wild and the look of one abandoned. He has Abigail, yes, of course he does, and he'll focus on her, but still. All his arguments vanish, his throat dries up, he feels like his own scar's been scratched at by malicious nails. Except they aren't Chilton's, they're his own. He's dug a grave. He knew this could turn badly, but him being turned out was not what he expected. His excuses feed into the idea of making Chilton his victim, or could be twisted that way. He mulls it over a good five minutes (locked in the bathroom) before he says anything back, and then it's either exactly what Chilton expected or nothing like it. He doesn't know. He's at a loss, anticipating loss, and desperately trying to figure out how to prevent that loss from being too great.]

just inpublic?

[Not talking to each other on the Network? Sure, okay, fine. Not approaching each other if they're at the same Swear-Ins? Fine. But this can't be in public to him, too, right? They still have this, don't they? Or meeting somewhere no one else could see them? He's not—he's not cutting off him entirely, is he? He couldn't. He wouldn't. ...right?

Insult and kick (though, if Will is completely off the mark about all this, he's done that to Chilton throughout this conversation, too), Will doesn't want to be set free. Even though he started this by the implied threat that Will could spill the beans, the actual threat is one Chilton just unleashed and Will hadn't thought about as being a possibility. Maybe it's obvious to Chilton that he won jackpot, in his own way, through the glaring issues in Will's typing. Abandonment requires expectation. Will has always expected that regardless of what Chilton and he might get into with, no one ends up abandoned. So he latches onto the only thing he really feels he can. The only thing that might be worth latching onto, to show willingness that he can behave. He can work within set boundaries. He can prove that even though he's not changed in the best way, he's not actually a psychotic sadist. He isn't a blossoming Chesapeake Ripper onto himself. He can be trusted. He can be a good boy.]

[Codependency. That's what Chilton would have diagnosed this scene as, a codependent reality -- a claim that would have come more readily had he not been one of the two participants involved. But it was a diagnosis curled with a twist: codependency in screeching conflict with survival. Will Graham couldn't be blamed for his nature, as Chilton perceived it, his tendency to embroil himself with dangerous people. The mutual magnetism. And now with Abigail's return, the stakes for Will Graham had hiked. This was a Greek tragedy unfolding, and Chilton wanted to change genres.

Crane was a bacteria that had already taken infectious root. He had already persuaded Will to act (as Chilton saw it) erratically against Chilton, and that was dangerous. Not even persuaded, really: suggested. Had Abigail not been the catalyst, Crane would have failed. But Chilton held no delusion about his placement on Will's social hierarchy: Abigail would always come first, and that left Chilton exposed. This was only damage control, this was reclaiming the parameters.]

Crane cannot know, if we still speak to each other. You will have to tell him that we don't, that you've cut off communication, if the topic arises. The man is arrogant enough that he won't even think to question.

No one can know. Not even our mutually acquainted shapeshifter.

[Chilton was already in conversation with the chimera. Someone had to watch out for Will Graham, if Chilton couldn't any longer. And judging by Will's recent text, someone ought to quickly.]

[Chilton's right in that thinking. Abigail comes before April, even. Will simply tries to put any worst case scenarios regarding picking and choosing out of his head and leaves whatever comes to him in his nightmares behind on the pillow as best he can.

His fears of being abandoned feel completely valid when he catches if. Will might not like what Chilton has to say at times (he figures this is something that goes both ways), but he'd be an idiot not to pick up on the fact that Chilton chooses his words with purpose, agenda. if if if, it sticks out like the only neon sign on a long, dark stretch of dirt road miles away from any other hint of civilization. A neon sign that points out a quicker road to where he needs to be. He turns, follows, replies quickly and with sudden renewed interest in using English.]

No one including Abigail and April, I assume? [Does that extend to Raina? To people Chilton thinks are worthy of knowing this? He wants to ask. But he wants to not be cut off completely more than anything else right now, and he knows thin ice when he feels it beneath his feet.] I can abide by this.

And April. [Of course. Chilton would include Raina in his business, especially when it became pertinent. Why wouldn't Will do the same, with his significant others? It was only fair, he supposed.]

She doesn't seem too involved with Crane's social experiments.

She isn't. She also knows where to draw the line, what to make light of and what to keep hidden. I've never tried to keep this device away from her before. She'd know something was up if I started acting odd around it now.

[Unlike Will who apparently crossed a line with this whole mess, go figure. Keeping secrets from Abigail comes naturally enough. If Chilton's going to extend him the ability to discuss this with his significant other openly, that's exactly what Will's going to take away and that's exactly what he's going to do...provided it ever comes up, of course. Dumping it on April but saying she has to keep it from Abigail, too, isn't very fair. Rock and a hard place, and didn't he put himself here? Christ.]

You've got my other number on file if you'd prefer to use that.

[He's used his cell phone mostly for fishing-related stuff, and who cares about that boring shit?]

Thanks.

["Sorry" is hard to type and could get twisted if he was that direct, but being polite isn't a crime. Being polite prevents crime, at least in Baltimore.]

Let's hope that your more obscured number won't be a necessary strategy. I would hate it to come to that.

[Because it certainly implied something even worse than Chilton had been anticipating. But he didn't believe that Crane was so invested as to snoop Will Graham's phone and communicator -- Will wasn't his Batman, after all, and Crane wasn't Will's Hannibal.]

Tread carefully.

[He's just ready for that worst possible outcome. Except the worst possible outcome of "one of the two people he has from back home cutting him off entirely," that is, since it hadn't ever crossed his (waking) mind.]

Can do.

[The hoping, treading, not talking in public, lying as needs must...after finishing off what alcohol's in the house and spending the rest of this weekend reevaluating his life choices by going over every interaction he's had with Crane to see if Chilton's more on target with why Will did this than Will thinks he is, currently.]

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