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[nascensibility]

Hello, this is Evie. If I haven't picked up, it means I'm probably deep into research and may require digging out.
Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

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action;

[nascensibility]

[Evelyn absorbs information like a sponge, taking the bits and pieces with which she is presented, processing them in due time when she is permitted proper rumination. A persistent approach to history that has consistently bothered her is rote memorisation without analysis - students regurgitating facts and dates because they are taught to do so rather than think critically, rather than question the perception of history they are being offered.

History is people, not events, and people are fallible, faulty creatures. They make promises they cannot keep and rash decisions out of pride, they start wars over insults upon honour, destroy nations to slake their thirst for blood or lust for lovers. History is subjective and one is always looking through their own lens, hindered by their own experiences.

The glass she peers through is scratched in some places and clouded in others, weary with influence.

Will speaks and she is cold, colder than her heated room should merit, colder than the wind outside and what felt like a slightly hazy view narrows into a sharp point, focused and magnified and burning a hole into her lungs.

For a long moment Evelyn cannot breathe, the implications crushing into her, wave after wave, the bits and pieces that made up a scenery not yet identified revealing a landscape strewn with bodies.]

...you knew.

action;

[glumshoe]

[ Yes, people are fallible. They make decisions for others, keeping mind ill-defined ideas of what is right and correct because their world is treachery, deceit, bluffs and double bluffs, everything appearing not as they are. They make decisions they can't take back, and those decisions stay, ignorant of the fact that things change, people change, and that the decision you make for a person then has to stand for the person they later become.

The influences Will carries with him don't make sense for anyone but him. He knows that. Ripped out of the context of his own world, free of a justice system, of the permanence of death, he's made the wrong decisions. Trying to amend that might mean losing who he was protecting. Will is more used to this sacrifice than should be allowable.

The symphony's gone quiet. Will is horrifically aware of the way Evelyn just - shrinks with revelation. The cold he encased himself in since his return is spreading, passing from his hand to hers, encroaching where the sun should reign over her unshakeable foundations. Brought in to heal while committing yet a deeper hurt that surpasses all others.

He and Hannibal are just alike.

Will's grip loosens, falls away. ]

I knew.

action;

[nascensibility]

[As though she were losing mass and turning to dust Evelyn's relinquished hand is drawn back and joins its pair, arms folded tightly over her chest to hold the chips of ice and grains of sand together. Less than five minutes ago she was picking out a scarf and wondering if he might like to take a walk with her. Less than five minutes ago Will wasn't dismantling her steadfast faith in him, brick by brick, mortar washing away in the deluge.

She could have asked him, helplessly sitting under the influence of Crowley's curse, but she didn't. He would have told her - even then, it does not negate the fact that the information remained a secret for months beforehand, that he had ample opportunity to say something, anything.

He remained quiet and complicit, and dozens of weeks of silence only serve to twist the shock on her face into abhorrence.]

I trusted you.

[glumshoe]

[ Trusted. Already past tense. Will manages not to flinch that badly. ]

I know.

[ The simple answer to the question she didn't ask is that Will took advantage of her trust to help Hannibal fly under the radar. To keep the lie intact, and, Will thought, Evie's neck. He even knew, he knew back then that this day would come and their relationship would meet the same fate as so many of Will's friends that he took into confidence. This time it just breaks the other way around, acting too late, breaking credulity in the opposite direction than anyone who would not listen to the soothsayer's cries from inside his therapy cage.

Will can't win. He can only hope to keep her away from him and Hannibal both.

He's seen Evelyn's face in sheer terror, looking upon her the nightmare from her sand-strewn memory, but Will has felt the reality-tilting horror of being betrayed by someone in whom you placed complete trust. It looks something very much like this.

What choice does he have other than to retreat away from the point of impact, levering himself from the couch. Retreating. ]

I'm sorry, Evie.

[nascensibility]

[Will knew, Hannibal knew, others clearly had their suspicions and she - she who had once befriended another detective and by proxy, his monster - had been left purposefully ignorant to what end? To allow Hannibal to continue his ghastly hobby without interruption? How long could it have gone on before the live load brought the house down?

He stands and she mirrors him, the chill in her veins curling its frigid fingers around her heart as she chases a lure to its source, persistent as ever.]

You're sorry?

[Shock gives way to distress, distress gives way to anger.]

You've kept this from me for months, you let me- you let me eat people, you let him kill and- and hurt, he framed you, for God's sake, and we-

[Choking on the last word, Evelyn finds that forcing out feelings that she had acknowledged and not yet uttered is considerably more difficult when her face is this hot, when her eyes are prickling at the edges.]

I thought we-

[It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. She tries to scrape the sentiment away and in the process feels as though she wants to scream, her only frame of reference for this sort of treachery being Moriarty's Cat-and-Mouse while Sherlock indulged him, enjoying every second that the rollicking chase was afoot.]

W-Was this just some kind of game to you?

[Silent, unspoken, And was I just a pawn?]

[glumshoe]

[ He never intended to keep letting Hannibal kill indefinitely. The sad truth is that with death's impermanence came a certain flexibility with which to gather evidence, to turn the tide of public opinion against Hannibal in ways that he could not double talk his way out of. Will's grown hard and ruthless in ways he couldn't imagine doing months ago, when singing from the top of his lungs wouldn't have gotten him anywhere except further ostracized, the murderer that blames his psychiatrist and nothing more.

Yes, he could have said something much, much earlier than now. But - ]

Would you have believed me?

[ Underneath the sorrow and crippling pain not wanting him to press onward, there is a thread of steel when everything else seems to be folding in. ]

You sat across from me, a stranger, watching a psychiatrist place his murderous patient at his right hand, and you'd say yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

[ His throat collapses on the sentence, forcing Will to swallow all the well-meaning you're unwells and whispers of the death penalty and unspoken you are insanes in people's eyes. Not just people's eyes, but his colleagues, friends, hatred in complete strangers. So much energy expended in the interest of prying Will free from the rest of humanity that they are surprised when he does something amoral. ]

I didn't think so, then. So what was to stop me from saying something later, when you -

[ and I were...

Will breaks off, mind jumping track. ]

Alana, she - never said it because she was too good at not saying the wrong thing, but I saw it. In her. "Will Graham is delusional."

[ Will smiles and it's terrible and broken glass. ]

I couldn't take that from you too. I'd, you became -

essential for me to keep going.

[ Not a game at all. ]

[nascensibility]

[Early on Evelyn had tempered her suspicions regarding Hannibal's disclaimer-heavy introduction to Wonderland, going so far as to inquire why he would cast such a shadow on someone from his own world upon first arriving. The doctor was a pleasant conversationalist and seemingly trustworthy, a relic of the high society that pervaded Evelyn's world but has long-since disappeared by most people's timelines. They were comfortable - not too close, but apparently close enough that Hannibal had shared his concerns that Will was emotionally manipulating her, much like he had supposedly done with another woman from their universe.]

I'm not Alana!

[Evelyn snaps, as her voice cracks and she feels a strange, winnowing current of something akin to jealousy - foreign and unwelcome, don't compare me, please, don't you dare - curling around her, tightening like a vise.]

I would have believed you! I never had any reason not to!

[Essential. Essential. Essential.

Not a pawn, not a prop, just a person who had acquired a label of indispensability after a requisite period and Will's tangible desperation is a torch across the moor flashing S.O.S. at someone who suddenly isn't certain they understand Morse Code all that well, after all. The message screams longing and helplessness, a helplessness that incapacitates her around him because she loves him so fully, a helplessness clearly shared but being swallowed by her shattered perception of what they meant to each other.

Were there other half-truths? White lies?]

Had I ever given you cause to think I might be so easily influenced by another's opinion on someone's character? Were you that afraid of trusting me?

[glumshoe]

[ Will's look cuts: doesn't she think he knows that? How many nights did he spend next to Evie, pushing his hands through heavy sheafs of curls, burning softer, rounder outlines into his skull because she wasn't Alana and Will wanted to override the part of his imagination that would contest and gnashes its obsessive teeth at him?

They were beautiful, intelligent, compassionate souls, but Will hasn't been touched by starlight. It doesn't lay next to him and embrace him with both arms and a whole heart, nothing held back for better or worse.

Will isn't and has never been trusting. He can't accept her word that she would have believed him just because she says it now, with suspicions confirmed, with hindsight squarely in view. What was reliable in his world was human unreliability. The surety that somewhere along the line humans would falter and fall prey to the designs that rise around them, corralling them into a certain set of predictable responses. The certainty that Will himself fails too, and often, and that Evelyn deserved to know that a lot earlier to save herself the heartache and she stubbornly kept nourishing the best, underfed and uncared for parts of him.

So - ]

Yes!

[ His hands clap to his face, pressed hard into the corners and dragging downward. ]

I was afraid, I was terrified of -

[ Being seen for what he was, a liar on behalf of his abuser. Finding another Hannibal, making himself vulnerable because he chose to and no, he'd made an indelible mistake. Falling in love with a married woman, having no business being part of her life. ]

- hoping for too much. I tried to protect you.

[ Everything's spiraling out of control, signals crossing and switching, too much ground-shaking to possibly know where they stand with each other and know how to know the truth, understand its shape. Will's face feels hot, adrenaline burning his eyes and not allowing anything but desolation to stretch, miles and miles. Here was a man so used to mirages that he didn't trust the oasis when its waters cooled his aching, torn feet. He was still on the road, lurching toward a destination more perilous than the last and having to go anyway.

Evelyn couldn't love or trust him when there were parts held back from her sight, unknown to her. Will couldn't trust her fully because of it, too terrified to amend it, and endlessly they spiral into a Purgatory of their own making.

Will's hands drop, the growth and flourish that Evie's influence encouraged filed back down to the stump of a person Will was when he arrived in Wonderland, then hollowed by the actions he's taken, caving in as he's removing his last support for her own good.

I love you he thinks. ]

I was wrong.

[ he says. ]

[nascensibility]

[Evelyn is blessedly predictable in many ways, reacting as any other sensible human would given the right stimuli and impetus. Wonderland and her own life have given her a far higher threshold than most - a fish out of water having to evolve to technological advances with startling speed, her foundations of logic and sensibility rocked by the existence of ancient powers. Modernity is convenient at best and confusing at its worst, but social progression thrills her, acceptance a delight.

With Will there is so little lost in translation, any and all corrections gentle, the sapling she transplanted into his rich soil heavy with blossoms and burdened with branches. It is safer, she thinks, to love completely, not to hold anything back. One can never be truly rejected. In her all-encompassing affections she fails to see why someone wouldn't trust her, and the snap of Will's yes digs into her like a razor.

She tries not to let it show how much it hurts, but she's never been particularly skilled at hiding her emotions.]

My protection is not your responsibility.

[The words bleed from her, each syllable stained with memories in which Evelyn shed red for others, and they for her. It was never fair, but then, neither is Wonderland. Guilt is natural, innate, people are bound to wish they could have done something, thoughts that they entertain after the disaster and vows to be there in the future. If not that, they push away and they fight, clawing for distance.

I'm not safe, Sherlock had told her. I never will be. There is no reward in associating with me.

In this volatile moment that rends her apart, when she can feel hot tracks cutting down her cheeks as her vision blurs, Evelyn has the weakness to wish Will to know with what mastery he kindled her, heap of ashes that she had been, into a fire again.

I love you she wants to say.]

I think you need to leave.

[she whispers.]

[glumshoe]

[ Too late for the "it's not you, it's me," of course. The branches are already stripped by harsh winter winds, struck by lightning, hacked down and should not be. It is poisoned to its roots and needs uprooting, burning, and yet Will struggles against that fate out of naked survival instinct. It's a far off wish, to blossom again. He'd dream about it alone, sun listing back into an autumnal, dying path in the sky.

She strips him of even that small comfort from standing alone and unconsciously compartmentalizing. Her tears are rain even he'd refuse out of shame, letting them dry into the soil. He sways, face drawn blank where shadows don't cut definition into it, and moves to leave the room, her life before he is petrified into place. ]

[nascensibility]

[When Evelyn was a little girl, she begged her older brother to go skating with her at the lake down by the village. It was February, with frigid air and laughter swirling clouds out of their mouths and into the sky, frosted grass crunching beneath their shoes. Jonathan was twenty-one and she was twelve, toting ice skates over her shoulder and tugging him along excited and alight with the pleasure of his company.

The thaw came early in 1917, a reality only made evident when the ice under her spider-webbed, hairline cracks jerking toward her shifting weight with purpose, and it collapsed beneath her.

Since then no chill has pulled her under so swiftly, unable to breathe, drifting in shock. Back then Jonathan had braved the risks to drag her free and back to shore, but no hand thrusts into the lake now to catch her collar and hold her close, massaging warmth back into frozen limbs. Evelyn would speak to stop Will's retreat at her own request, but opening her mouth would only pour more water into her lungs, killing her faster.

She says nothing.]