Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Abigail.” Will said in shock. He blinked twice to make sure she was really there. When she didn’t vanish, he spoke again: “Come in! You’re soaking wet!” He opened more the door so she could come inside, and spread his arms to embrace her.

“Dad, I’m all wet” she fought, but went to his arms anyway. Will held her tight, smelling her sweet scent of pears that didn’t change in all those years. Abigail hugged him as tight as he, happy to be in a place she could call home.

“Do you want to take a bath?” Will asked, taking the backpack out of her shoulders. “I guess there are some of your old clothes in your room.”

“Yes, I will.” She said with a juvenile smile. She seemed so much older. Not in a bad way, though. She looked mature and all grow up… A woman.

Will shushed the paternal feelings while taking her to the stairs. “I know where my room is, Will.”

He laughed. “Oh. I’m sorry. Are you hungry? I can cook something while you’re on the bath.” He offered.

Abigail raised an eyebrow. “Cook? You? No, I’m fine, I can make myself a sandwich later.”

“I can cook perfectly well.” Will replied, looking to the kitchen where he knew Hannibal was waiting. She was halfway on the stairs when an idea came to Will’s mind. “Breakfast for dinner?”

Abby turned on her heels and her smile grew bigger. “Do you remember this?”

“Of course!” Will smiled too.

“Well… It seems good for me.” She answered and went the rest of the way to the second floor.

Filled with a new joy, Will went to the kitchen. Hannibal was already picking the pans, smiling as a proud father. “She’s home.”

“I know.” Will agreed with a big smile.

Hannibal leaned to kiss him. “Family reunited again.”

Will helped Hannibal to cook, listening to the sounds on the upper floor as Abigail took her bath.

Leaving her room with clean clothes, drying her hair with the towel, Abigail stopped in the hallway with the surprise of hearing Will talking.

There was someone else in the house?

She stood still, listening, searching for the second voice. But there was none, only Will’s.

“I can’t believe she came, it’s been so long, right?” He said.

No answer came, yet he kept talking.

Frowning, it took Abigail a time to understand what was happening.

Will wasn’t talking with anyone , yet he wasn’t talking to himself.

“I know. I missed parenting too, as strange as it might seem.” Will continued.

The frown disappeared from the woman’s face.

Will was talking to Hannibal.

It was obviously something she didn’t expect. It would require a closer attention to her father than she thought.

Respectfully, she made a loud unnecessary noise while coming down the stairs so Will would know she was coming. When she entered the dinning room, dinner was served, exactly like Hannibal would do. It made her heart ache, for Will mostly, but she missed Hannibal a lot.

He could’ve teached her so much more…

They ate in silence, sharing smiles to one another once in a while. Will ate little and took his time to watch Abigail. He didn’t realize how much he missed her until now.

When they finished eating, she offered to help with the dishes as she used to do before. Hannibal normally would cook and the dishes were Abigail and Will’s job.

It felt like the time hadn’t passed. Will felt like these two years since she moved to New York had never happened.

“Dad?” She called.

Will turned to her.

“Can I stay here for a few days?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Of course you can, this is your house too!”

Abigail didn’t miss the strange look Will gave to beyond the spot where she was, as if there where someone with the back against the wall, watching them.

“It won’t be long, I promise.”

“Stay as long as you want, ok?” Will extended his hand to reach hers. “But out of curiosity, what brings you to Baltimore?” It wasn’t just for visiting. She would come - or meet them when they were going to travel - normally during holidays. It wasn’t any.  I think , Will added.

“I came for my test at the academy. My application.” She said proudly.

Will frowned. “I thought you had given up on this.”

“I know you’re not fond of me joining the FBI, but this is what I chose.”

“I know.” Will smiled. “I’m proud you studied all the way here, if this is what you really want, and if you need any help studying for the application… I’m here.”

Abigail smiled. They later went to the living room, seated on the couch with cups of tea and spent hours talking about Abby’s life in New York, the weather, the cases Will worked for the FBI after she left, the new dogs in the house, laughter being a common sound between them. Winston and Dante couldn’t stop hovering around her in happiness. Nor Will, to be honest.

It was long past midnight when Abigail yawned, saying she would go to bed. Will followed her upstairs and went to his room, kissing her forehead as a goodnight kiss.

“Sleep well, dad.” Abb yawned again, like a little kid. In moments like that Will would always found himself thinking about how she was like when she was a small kid, wondering how Hannibal and he would manage taking care of a toddler. It was fun to think that, considering they barely never spoke about the possibility of having children, specially because Abigail was there before they even were a couple. But once in a while Will would imagine how it would be like to adopt a Lecter baby.

Then he would change his mind, thinking - with reason - how terrible parent he would be.

Hannibal was laid in the bed when he entered the room, only in his sleep pants, with a book on his hands. He opened a big smile to Will. “It’s so good to have her near.”

Will threw himself in the bed with a lazy sigh after leaving the door half closed. He studied Hannibal’s features for a while, touching the skin of his husband’s shoulder with his fingertips. Hannibal closed the book and silently put it in the bedside table. When he turned back, Will’s eyes were on him, his pupils dilated with passion, impossible to resist. He pulled Will closer to him and kissed the younger man with ferocity. Will sighed, the world shutting itself away from them as Hannibal’s smell was all that mattered in that moment. He moved to be in top of his lover, his lips going to Hannibal’s neck, kissing right below the curve of his ear where he knew Hannibal was sensitive.

“Abby is here.” Hannibal whispered.

Will murmured in protest “We will be quiet.”

Hannibal put his hand inside Will’s shirt, touching the skin of his back. “You’re never quiet.” He laughed. “And that’s how I like it.” he completed, holding Will by the waist and putting the younger man in the place next to his.

Will snorted, but he was laughing too. “You’re right. I’ll behave.”

Abigail was having trouble sleeping, as usual. She managed to deal with the nightmares years ago, but she would always lose the battle against sleeping in a strange bed. It was like her body was expecting for her own bed and couldn’t find a comfortable position to sleep. It was an absurd, since she had slept many years in that bed in Baltimore and in the times she came to visit after she moved. She stared at the clock in the bedside table. It was 3:40 AM. Snorting, she stood up and left the room, heading to the kitchen to have a glass of water so she could take a sleeping pill. She stopped near Hannibal and Will’s room. The door was ajar, a small gap throwing light in the corridor. Even though Will had stopped talking to himself almost two hours ago, the light of the lampshade was on. It took Abigail some time to adjust her eyes and see, but the image made her hold her breath. Will was seated diagonally in the edge of the bed, his back almost full to the door. He was so thin she could count his vertebrae, one by one. His skin was covered in ugly scars, some new and some that seemed very, very old. That would be shocking enough, if it weren’t for the syringe in the inside of Will’s elbow.

He is drugging himself?

She quickly walked to the bathroom, in order to think.

There, in plain sight, was a bag the size of a small travel bag above the sink, opened.

Inside, dozens of bottles of medicine and packaged syringes. She picked one of the bottles, frowning while staring at the liquid that was inside and trying to read what was in the small label.

Patient’s Name: Graham, Will

Dr: F. Chilton.

And a very long and strange chemical formula.

Abigail couldn’t process what to think first. Hearing Will moving in the other room, she quickly went back to her room with one of the bottles in her hand and jumped in bed a second before Will opened her door. She pretend to sleep, her eyes wide open staring at the wall, her back to the door so he couldn’t see her.

She didn’t move until she heard him closing the door slowly to not wake her up and walking away.

Without turning the lights on, she stared in the dark at the small bottle in her palm.

Now that she really wouldn’t sleep.

Whatever was wrong with Will, Abigail was at that moment pretty sure it was worse than she first thought.

Good thing that she was studying to become a FBI agent.

She now had her first case.

Abigail spent the next afternoon locked in her room, studying. Will offered to help but she said she was fine, so he decided not to bother her insisting. Instead, he read e-mails - three from Jack asking if he would send the classes to academy or if he would bother to appear there. Will laughed ironically. Even though he had lacked his skill as a teacher for months now, Jack refused firing him. It was quite fun. In any normal job he would be fired for much less, but not under Jack’s watch. For Jack Will’s mind was too precious and Will could bet how Jack was still hopeful that he would eventually come back to help with the cases. “A fine chinese teacup”, as Hannibal used to call how Jack sees Will. And another part of Jack, obviously, felt guilt for putting Hannibal in the middle of the FBI business, which led to his death. It was ugly and devious, but at the moment Will couldn’t care less.

If Jack eventually decided to fire him, no problem too. He wouldn’t beg.

He played with the dogs and bathed one by one as the day passed by, occasionally knocking on Abby’s door to see if she was still there or if she wanted a snack. It was good and strange at the same time to have another person in the house. The bad part was to always be in need of reminding himself that he couldn’t speak out loud with Hannibal because she would listen.

Will looked around, confused. He was laid in the couch, but he couldn’t remember falling asleep or even being there to begin with.

Hannibal was seated in one of the armchairs, the one in Will’s left. He smiled “Losing track of time again?”

Will snorted, nodding.

A moment later he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. “Tea is ready!” Abby sang, leaving the room with two mugs on her hands. She extended one to the confused Will and seated with the other in the armchair on his right. She crossed her legs, comfortably adjusting herself in her seat. It was impressive to see how that suspicious girl that he once met become this self confident woman.

Will blinked a couple of times, trying to ground himself in reality. His hand shook to much to hold the teacup in one hand, so he set it on his lap.

“Dad?” Abby sipped her tea. Will did the same, nodding. “Can we talk?” Her tone seemed serious.

Will took a deep breath, studying her face. There it was. The only subject they avoided since she came home.

“Yes.” He said between sips.

“I know is hard for you to talk about it…”

“But I can talk about it with you.” Will completed for her. “I know. He was your father too. Go on.”

He couldn’t avoid looking to the other armchair as Hannibal adjusted himself to hear too.

“How are you? Really ? I know we don’t talk much about our feelings, we never did, and I really enjoy that we can share the silence without feeling awkward about it or feeling that we have to constant fill the void, but… How are you? ”

Will even thought about it for a moment because he didn’t want to lie to her. There was no motive to.

“I’m fine.” He said, and he was glad it was true. “It’s not always easy, but… I’m much, much better than a couple of months ago. I’m glad you weren’t here to see. It’s hard, obviously and I” he coughed “I miss him… All the time” Will held the impulse to look at Hannibal again to see his expression. “But I’m coping.” He smiled.

Abigail laid her cup on the coffee table and picked something from the pocket in her pants. “This is how you’re coping?”

Will’s face become white as snow as he held his breathe. She was holding one of the medicine bottles Chilton gave him.

Feeling suddenly nauseated, he remembered the bag in the bathroom, in plain sight to anyone who entered there.

“Dad?” Abigail called, waiting.

“I…” He had no idea of what he could possible say.

“You’re using drugs.” It wasn’t a question.

“It’s not… Drugs.” Will’s cheek begun to get red. “It’s medicine.”

“In a strange looking bottle with an even stranger formula prescribed by nobody less than Frederick. Fucking. Chilton?!” As she spoke, Will lowered his head, ashamed. “We can pretty much call it ‘drugs’.”

Will opened his mouth to retort, but he thought better. It was Abigail , after all. If he couldn’t trust her, then everything was lost. “I know better than to lie to you.”

“Good.”

“I don’t even know what kind of things are in this” he pointed to the bottle, “And I hate some things that it does, like this” he raised his hand in the air to show how badly it was shaking “but… It makes me see… And talk… With him . It brings him back to me.” Will finished the sentence as his voice broke, a big knot on his throat making it hard to breathe.

Abigail put the bottle in the coffee table, sighing.

“Dad…”

“I know.” Will interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say, but is not like a regular drug. I really can have him here.”

“Is he here right now?” She asked.

Will looked to the armchair where Hannibal waited with a curious look. Abigail turned to the armchair. “Please, stop doing this to him.” She asked.

“Abigail!” Will rebuked her.

Hannibal showed a sad countenance.

“Dad, listen. I am no saint, ok? Nor I’m trying to be. That day… The day I knew what happened…” Abby took a deep breathe. “I went to a pub with my friends in the night before and came home past midnight. I woke up past one o’clock pm that day. I was in the kitchen, wondering if I would cook lunch or breakfast, when I remembered I had left my jacket with a friend, Daisy. I knew she would be awake so I picked my cellphone to ask her to keep it for me, or if she could bring it later. I unlocked my phone and there was eight calls from Alana. Eight. I knew something was wrong right away. I used to talk to her once or twice in a month and she wouldn’t call me eight times for no reason.”

Abigail lowered her head to her feet as she told him, remembering every detail of that day. She could remember how her hands immediately begun to shake when she dialed Alana’s number.

“Hi? It’s-It’s Abigail.”

“Hi, Abigail.” Alana’s tone seemed exhausted.

“What happened?”

“I’m sorry for calling you so-”

“What happened?” Abigail rushed, feeling sick.

“Your father. Hannibal.”

She would never forget Alana’s voice and words as she told her Hannibal had been shot. That he was dead. That the funeral was going to happen around five o’clock, if she wanted to come in the first plane.

“I couldn’t move.” Abigail continued telling Will. “It felt like the air had been taken away from my chest. I don’t remember what I answered nor what I did with the phone. I just remember that I picked a coat and walked in my pajamas the seven miles to Daisy’s house in the middle of the cold winter. I was afraid to be alone. I felt so… Numb.” She made a pause, trying to control the knot forming in her throat. “I… I thought I would lose my mind again. I kinda did. Everything I had learned to leave in the past and grow away seemed to come back to me. I got depressed. In the sick, psychological way. In the following months I basically stopped doing anything I had build for my life. I would spend my days laid in bed in a constant, overwhelming fear of becoming again that old Abigail. My biological father was a serial killer that killed my mother and my best friend. He tried to kill me. I had new fathers that loved me and taught me to be who I wanted to be… And now Hannibal was dead. And I couldn’t do nothing to undo it. And I felt like I had lost you too, because I couldn’t make it to the funeral. I was angry and sad and scared and as the days passed by I only felt worse and guilty for leaving you here alone. I failed you, dad.”

“No, you didn’t.” Will replied, his eyes filling with tears.

“I did. I failed both of you.” She made another pause. “I stopped eating and cleaning myself or doing anything… At all. Then, all of sudden, I felt better.” Abigail closed her eyes for a second. “Or I thought I was. I decided to leave it all behind and live my life to the fullest before something happened to me to. I pushed my friends away. I made new ones. I went to parties, I had fun, I drank. I would do anything to fill the emptiness inside of me. To avoid thinking about my dead parents or about you suffering here. I got drunk. I got high. I slept with all kind of unknow people. I would tell everyone who would ask with a big smile that I also would show to myself in the mirror ‘I’m fine. I’m amazing. I have friends and parties and a nice job, my agenda is so full I can’t breathe! I’m laughing, I go to the movies, I dance, guys love me, I’m a party! I feel great!’ but… It was a lie. I had no friends. I got fired from my not so good job at a bookstore. I yelled with mostly everyone, I would pick up a fight with my eighty years old neighbour over nothing, I slept with guys I didn’t know the name only to not be alone in my own apartment. And when I was alone? I would be too drunk or too high from a shitty and doubty marijuana I’d bought a few alleys behind my job and I would walk in the rooftop of my building drunk as hell hoping I would fall and die because I didn’t deserve to be in this stupid shitty world less than the people I loved and died or were alone and suffering while I was screwing a stranger. I had become everything you and he taught me not to be. I had become what Hannibal would hate. I was rude and mean and stupid even to myself and the more I did more I would hate me for have becoming this.”

Will felt the teardrop coming down his cheeks. She needed him all the time and he was just there… Doing nothing. “What happened? How did you…?”

“I found an old letter in the back of my wardrobe with a couple of things from here I took to New York. I found a letter from dad, one he wrote a couple of days before I moved. With a number of websites and telephones and numbers of places I should visit in New York, and with phones of good psychiatrists I could go in case of an emergency. But that wasn’t what changed my mind.”

“What was?”

“What he wrote.” She closed her eyes and quoted “‘Remember, whenever dark days comes, that no pain is worthy your happiness. No pain and nobody is most valuable than yourself, nor worthier. Friends, co workers, not even me. Fight for yourself harder than you fight for anybody else, my dear Abigail, because no one can be worthier of happiness than you.”

Will took a deep breathe. A delicate smile formed in the corners of his mouth.

“That sounds like him.”

“It took me a time to fully understand what he meant, dad, but is true. And now I have to say to you” she stared deep into Will’s eyes “is that what you’re doing to yourself, all this effort to have a illusion of him that is destroying you… Is not worth it.”

“Is not like that.”

Abigail took a deep breathe. “Yes. It is. When you love someone… You create an image of this person.”

Will nodded. “An imago. He said that.”
An imago is the image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives.

“Yes. The problem with this is that is just an imago. An image. An ideal. Is not the real person and we fight against reality, shaping an image that best suits us. But it is just an ideal. Hannibal was no god and we know it. He wasn’t perfect, far from it. He was just human. With an exquisite mind and an odd, dangerous lifestyle.”

“What are you talking about?” Will asked, frowning, becoming to get angry. It felt like she was trying to tell him that Hannibal was a bad person, as if it were wrong to love him. That was an absurd.

“You know what I am talking about Will. What he did. What we did.”

Will’s frown just become bigger. “I don’t… What are you talking about?”

“Dad, please. You more than anyone. You fought with Hannibal so many times until you understood and accepted. I don’t know if you still do things as we did when I lived here, but… He is not worth it.”

“Don’t talk about your father like he was a criminal.”

“Dad.” She wasn’t understanding Will’s refuse. Was he brainwashed or something? “We all are , in the law sense, at least. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

It was ridiculous.

“I don’t know what are trying to say, but you’re wrong. I’m not a criminal and certainly nor was Hannibal!”

“Will!” She raised her tone.

Will stood up, too angry to talk. What happened to her? “Stop talking about Hannibal like that.”

“But is the truth!”

“Don’t confuse Hannibal for Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Abigail!” He shouted, going to the stairs. Will wouldn’t let her be so disrespectful like that. He went to his room; “Hannibal was not a murder!” he shouted, shutting the door.

Abigail was confused. Will’s reactions and words didn’t made any sense. She stood there in silence, trying to understand.

When the night came, she knocked on Will’s door to ask if he wanted to have dinner but no answers came. She waited for a time, then went downstairs to the kitchen. Later, she tried to talk to Will again. He didn’t answer.

“That’s ridiculous and you know it.” She said to the door. “I’m going to sleep.”

But she didn’t. She went to Hannibal’s office, going inside by the mezzanine’s library, since the front door was closed. She went down the stairs and looked around. The furnitures were covered with sheets and full of dust. It was sad.

Abigail seated in one of the armchairs. She had a lot to think and a lot to sort. This case was far from being solved.

When Will finally left his bedroom it was morning again. He felt tired and ashamed of behaving like an idiot with Abigail, but part part of him was still angry and mostly confused about the things and the way she spoke. He went to her room - she wasn’t there. The bed was made, and for a moment he felt a gut wrenching pain in the stomach thinking he scared her enough to make her leave.

Luckily he found himself to be wrong, finding a note above the kitchen’s countertop, wrote in handwriting:

There’s breakfast in the refrigerator. I went to the library to pick some files for my test. Case study.

I’ll be back after lunch. Really sorry for yesterday. Luv u

• Ab

Will smiled.

She hadn’t flee away after all.

Abigail came back a few minutes past 3 PM, seeming worried and agitated.

“Is everything okay?” Will asked when she came in. She was carrying a backpack that seemed heavy.

“Yeah. Just a bit agitated.” Her fingers were drumming on her pants.

“Why?” Will placed a hand in the empty place near him in the couch. “Seat here. Calm yourself.”

“I’m… Fine. I was studying an old FBI case to help to the test at the Academy and I manage to get to the answer.” She gazed him with a serious expression, as if what she was saying had more to do with him than he knew.

“That’s good!” He smiled. “You’re very clever, Abby. You’ll do fine.”

Her smile was thoughtful and unsure. “Would you mind driving me somewhere?”

Will frowned. “Where?”

“I’ll give you the instructions in the car.”

“Is it part of your study?”

“We can say so.” She whispered more to herself.

“Ok.” Will stood up. “We have to go now?”

Abigail made a puppy face, like a small kid. “Please?” Her feet were moving fast up and down with anxiety.

He made a gesture to pick his coat and they were in the car a few minutes later.

“Turn left.” Abby continued to give Will instructions. “We’re almost there.”

Will had the impression he knew that road, the houses surrounding the car in both sides seemed strangely familiar.

He didn’t recognized the place until it was too late.

“Stop there.” Abby pointed to that known house.

“Why are we here?” Will asked, his voice trembling, his shaking hands holding the wheel too tight.

He parked and waited.

“Abigail.”

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

She pointed to the house, opening the door and leaving.

Will had no choice but to follow her.

Follow her to Bedelia Du Maurier’s front door.

“Do you know Bedelia?” Will asked, running after her.

Abigail stopped in the steps off the stairs in front of the door.

“Yes.” She gasped for air. “And you should know it.”

She climbed the rest of the stairs and rang the bell.

“What? Abigail!” Will held her pulse. “Explain to me what’s happening.”

“Dad, I’m sorry.” Abigail started. “But this is the case I’m working on.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how this happened. But Hannibal lied to you.”

Will’s tremors were getting worse. “I don’t…”

Bedelia appeared in the door.

Abigail took a deep breathe before speaking. “Something happened to your memory, Will.”

“What do you mean?”

“He erased your memory.”