The Bar at the End of the Universe

He'd wanted to go home.

It's not a building, or a place. It doesn't mean any one thing, nor is it always the same thing. Usually an ache for some kind of stillness, and familiarity, but this time it has something else attached. He could walk straight through the back door, find the dogs in the forest, but they're not what he's looking for. That ache is for something before -

Before Florence and Aukštaitija and Palermo. Before the last supper, before Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Before Garrett Jacob Hobbs and Dr. Lecter and Jack Crawford, and even before the dogs, before Quantico and before Wolf Trap.

His father had a drink for when they were broke. Bottom of the bottom shelf, it tasted terrible and still always burned his throat. And it worked quickly, so it lasted longer in the bottle than anything else in their cupboard, or trunk. Cheap and reliable and almost always around.

It's what Graham orders from the bar, carries to corner booth along with a glass tumbler, both in his left hand. (He can't seem to move his right.) He slumps back in the booth, pours a finger into the glass, and never looks beyond the table. The bandage on his forehead is clean, as are the few nicks on his face and the bruise along his eye, but nearly everything else about him seems ignored and unkempt.


[ooc: Open until it scrolls, but this will be a lot of post break-up drinking.]

[OOM: let the river run dry

Warnings for depictions and discussion of violence and gore, murder, psychological manipulation, trauma, and allusions to cannibalism.]

[OOM: private carnage, reinterpreted;



&



long pig.



Warnings in the first OOM for sexual content, manipulation involving sexual content, and allusions to abuse and violence. Also some deviation from canon, including in one major respect. Warnings in the second OOM for fairly detailed depictions of animal slaughter and butchering, psychological manipulation, and very clear allusions to cannibalism and violence.]

When Graham takes a seat at the bar, she promptly produces two things: a mug of coffee, and an opened tin of cookies that's still mostly full. He sets down a closed file folder, and reaches for the coffee first.

From the lowest rung of his barstool, a rat that had scurried with him through the door has perched to warily watch its newfound brethren as they pass by with their orders. For his part, Graham doesn't seem to be paying much attention to his rodent company.

[oom: hold my hand. Warnings for allusions to violence.]

The sliver of landscape visible through the door is bright white, a smooth layer of snow over a frozen field. Graham steps through the doorway, and closes it, cutting off the brief, cold draft that follows him.

He doesn't look surprised to see the bar. There's only a glance around, as he heads for an unoccupied table. In his right hand, he's carrying a small, rectangular cage – he sets it down on the table first, and the starling within it flutters from its perch to the narrow steel bars along the top, and then back again. Its black feathers shine in the new light, glinting with shades of violet down its throat, and blue and green along its wings. Graham takes a seat, pulling off his gloves and unwinding his scarf, but leaving on his long, gray coat. He sets the gloves and scarf on the table next to the cage, and orders a cup of coffee from a passing waitrat.

The starling makes a loud trilling sound and flits again to the side of the cage. Graham watches it, his face impassive.

Graham can't recall every step of how he got here. He'd heard the click as his cell door unlatched, and he remembers that for the first time, he'd felt no desire to leave. That he had wanted to remain on his cot, to ignore it and any other escape. But then he was on his feet, pushing the door open. There was the shift in light, abrupt and bright in his eyes, but that somehow, he'd kept the sounds and voices of the Bar muffled and distant. Present, but controlled, at arm's length.

It was something he'd rarely done before.

Now, he's in a chair at an empty table. Leaning forward and apparently watching the floor, elbows settled on his knees and his hands folded between them. He's still in his blue, numbered uniform.

He doesn't move, not at passing shadows, or scurrying waitrats. Even his hands are still, the only shift coming with his breath, constant and steady as the hands of a clock.