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“How impersonal,” Abigail mutters as she clicks off the safety. A smile she should despise, but doesn’t, is painted on her lips. “He will hate it.” Jack made the mistake of letting her re-enter the world this early, spending year after year in a government issued safe-house made revenge swirl and swell inside her.
“Hannibal knew how to cut Will so he survived, he wanted Will to live.” Jack had told her, once his own wounds healed.
“He left me to die.” Jack didn’t nod, didn’t agree with her; but his eyes betrayed him. She knew it was so even without a confirmation.
“For your own safety we are moving you into FBI protection.” Abigail had sighed as she looked out the window. Just another room she couldn’t leave from, another house to stay hidden in for a governmental motive. “We worry he will return to kill you if he learns you are alive.” Abigail smiled bitterly, as she stared at her reflection in the glass, her neck wrapped fully in gauze.
She knew Hannibal wouldn’t. You don’t kill someone who you believe is worth enough to come back for.
Getting access to a gun was easy, the knife in her pocket- not so much. Finding where Hannibal was after he vanished was even harder, but here he was, sitting at a table on a balcony of a modern and expansive cabin that is tucked away in thick evergreens. Abigail flexes her fingers of her dominant hand, trying to cease their trembling. She seizes the trigger.
“Make sure it is a clean shot the first time,” her dad's once spoken words ring in her ear. “Unless you want your prey in fear, unless you want a hunt.” She looks through the scope, focusing on the glass sliding door behind him.
Abigail has never seen Hannibal afraid, she wonders if he is even capable of feeling fear. She tightens her grip on the trigger, mentally looping her shot pattern in her mind. The window first, then waiting for Hannibal to realize what is happening to him, who is happening to him, and then the second shot.
She exhales deep and steadily, the most grounded she has felt in years, slowly inching the trigger back. The pane of glass moves in her scope crosshairs and Abigail sighs, frustrated, before her whole body grows rigid. Abigail pulls her eye away from the scope to see who caused the movement, it wasn’t Hannibal, who still sits with his newspaper but now with a fond smile on his face.
He is smiling at Will. Abigail’s finger, without her knowledge, clicks the safety on. When her eyes return to the two men her shoulders drop, Will is smiling too. She pulls the rifle fully away from its shooting position to lean it against the nearby tree. She watches Will set what must be a cup of coffee on the table, sipping his own and joining to sit with Hannibal at the table.
A scar Abigail has not memorized from the pictures Jack showed her and the various Tattlecrime articles she read is carved into his cheek, moving slightly when he smiles and talks. She smooths out one side of her hair, unsure of what to do with her hands. She didn’t plan on Will.
Abigail continues to watch them, feeling her throat get tight; like oncoming tears, like Will’s hands. Last she heard he was married, and happy, and away from Hannibal. What went so wrong? Abigail thinks as she stares at them, feeling her chest tense while her heart sinks slowly inside of her, like it is descending through thick molasses.
Hannibal raises a hand and brushes his thumb over the scar on Will’s forehead. Over a scar she knows Hannibal gave him, a story Jack didn’t like telling. Will’s only reaction is a fond smile, a movement she is certain they do again and again. Will simply kisses the palm of Hannibal’s hand; the same hand that slit her neck open, the same hand that gutted him.
Sour bile rises in her throat, she imagines it is the color of the embalming fluid that dripped from her dad’s suited corpse after Hannibal forced her to cut him.
Slitting her dad’s neck, slitting Hannibal’s neck; they’re the same.
Abigail leans her back against the tree, clutching her rifle tight as she closes her eyes, trying to imagine the blood pooling around her combat boots. The blood is the first thing she can conjure in her mind, blood expanding slowly across the floor. She can see Hannibal with his hand to his own neck, never ripping his eyes away from Abigail even as blood loss kicks in. He would fall to the floor, and she would smile.
Blood cascading down his expensive shirt, seeping into the white button up just like it did that night.
She would feel like God, watching the blood run through his fingers like water rippling over rocks in a stream. But Abigail doesn’t want to be God, she just wants to be a girl. A girl with a normal life, with a name people don’t recognize, with an unwounded neck, and with both ears.
A certain God made sure she was denied that.
She can picture everything about him, but his expression. Even with his face blurry she can tell he is staring at her, and he won’t remove his eyes from her until the light fades from them; he would want her to watch his death.
And then he would die, as normally as everyone else. And then Will would find him.
Will.
Before she can stop herself she is picturing Will entering their home, watching him like a ghost in the corner. Will would press his hands over the wound until he realizes the blood isn’t flowing, and there is no heartbeat. She can’t decide if he would smile or cry; finally free or finally losing the one last person in his life.
He would collapse on the floor beside the corpse, the second time Will looked at the body of the loved one he was unable to save.
Abigail opens her eyes and blinks away tears. The last death Will dealt with was meant to break him, she couldn’t break him further.
She peaks around the tree and looks at the house, wondering if inside there is a bedroom that was supposed to be meant for her. Abigail shakes away the childish thought, drumming her fingers on the gun. She didn’t travel all this way for nothing.
Abigail isn’t sure how long she spent curled against that tree, in a big hunting coat that used to be her dads, until she hears the sound of the door opening. Looking past the bark she can see Will descend the steps, arms full of fishing gear.
He always wanted to teach me, she can’t help but think. She can’t help but imagine herself running from the woods to him. Dragging him, gear and all, to where her car is hidden miles away. But she stays comfortable, watching Will gradually walk out of view. Abigail’s eyes land back on the front door and she stands, leaving her gun leaning against the tree.
Abigail rises slowly and emerges from the forest towards the house. She feels as light as air, as gentle as the air somehow managed to feel after Alana thudded on the pavement. Violence can travel on light air.
Abigail adjusts her scarf around her neck as she climbs up the stairs, she enters the house as if it was her own. Abigail can immediately tell Will’s taste rubbed off on Hannibal, the decor is toned down and basic compared to the various Hannibal decorated homes she stayed in. Everything is most likely ungodly expensive but everything has a purpose, very Will. She runs her fingers over a fluffy grey blanket, the softness feels out of place.
“Did you forget something?” Abigail can hear Hannibal call from another room, she presumes a study or reading room. She lifts her head to his voice in a calmness that scares her; she is unsure if she is trained to his company or simply unafraid. She wonders if those things can even be separated.
She stays silent and looks around the house, a warm fire burns in the fireplace and the kitchen sits bloodlessly.
“Will, is everything alright?” Abigail can hear what sounds like a chair moving, and then footsteps. She stays watching the flames dance, they probably danced this way when he forced her to confront her dad's rotting corpse. She didn’t want to kill that one.This one, however, is something she would kill without hesitation. But she has hesitation, she knows she has to. For her other dad who is thigh deep in a stream, who somehow manages to stay beside Hannibal.
She can feel eyes on her, she knows those eyes too well. They stared from every dark corner of every room she stayed in when she was supposedly killed by Will. Even when Hannibal went days without visiting, his eyes still watched from every shadow. She feels those same eyes when she sputters awake from a nightmare, feels them staring at her neck.
“Abigail?” The voice sounds like Will's did. Sounds like seeing your world crash around you, sounds like knowing you’ve made a grave mistake. Maybe he knows blood will be spilled too, in the same way Will must have known.
Abigail finally looks over at him, allowing him the pleasure of eye contact. He looks aged but well, happy even. His hair is streaked with the beginnings of grey, and his face shows a faint stumble she couldn’t notice through her scope. He is dressed casually, casual to Hannibal that is.
His face looks unfazed but Abigail can tell from his micro-expressions he quickly cycled through the seven stages of grief. He surveys her clothing, her face, her scarf wrapped neck- trying to imagine the state of her neck, the scar he left on her.
Hannibal takes slow steps towards her, as if she is a frightened fawn caught in barbed wire. He smiles as if he is proud of himself, as if he is proud his hand cut her so she lived, even if his brain didn’t want her to. They are within arms reach, Abigail staring up at him coldly.
“You found us.” Hannibal says, the smile staying on his lips.
“It wasn’t that hard.” His eyes shine with pride. What was hard was managing to get into the FBI evidence room, shifting through all the boxes and files until she finally found it. She puts both her hands in her big coat pockets, as if to fully convey how unbothered she is about the whole ordeal. Her hand grips around the knife, he will love the symbolism of it.
Hannibal reaches to pull her into a hug, she pulls the knife from her pocket and flips it open, pressing the blade hard against his neck. His eyebrows knit together for a split second, he must recognize the blade against his skin. He moves his head back slightly, as if to bare his throat for her; it almost makes her forget about Will.
She presses the blade harder against his neck, blood starting to flow out of the wound, which is far too gentle for what he deserves. Hannibal looks down at her captivated and calm, he wants her to do it.
"Violence shattered the teacup and then violence brought it together.” Hannibal starts, more blood running down his throat with his words. “I can already see what you will become." He still smiles proudly, like how she used to imagine her dad would have smiled at her wedding, Hannibal robbed her of that too. “You're home, Abigail.” Hannibal reaches up to push her hair over her left shoulder, revealing how he mangled her ear. All she can think about is his hands pressed on the sides of her head as she sobbed, staring at the corpse of her dad.
"No,” she says meanly. “This is not my home.”
“If this is not your home then nowhere will be home.” He drags his thumb across her cheek, like he did in her kitchen. Abigail remembers how her face trembled then, and now she only clenches her teeth. “Home is where you will become who you are meant to be, you’re coming along nicely.” Something about his genuine smile is more unsettling than his fake one. She brings the blade away from his neck, looking at the wound, it’s much too shallow.
“Fuck you.” The words leave her lips with a venomous tone she hasn’t spoken in years, she brings the knife down hard and deep into the flesh just by his shoulder. Her lip curls with anger as she twists the blade until he drops his hand from her face. “Violence will never be commonplace in my home again."
“I’m not becoming anything.” Abigail continues as she pulls the blade out and pushes him away from her. An expression she has only seen once before is painted across his face; shock mixed with the sadness of a betrayal. “You molded me to be what you wanted, with no consideration for what I wanted. You know what I wanted? A normal life with people who love me, to leave the blood and the death behind me!” Tears of rage and a life lost tug at her eyes and she forces them away, he will not see her cry again.
“We do love you.” Hannibal says, his voice is calm but his eyes betray his composure; glassy and unfocused.
Her fingers scratch violently at her scarf to rip it away from her, tossing it to the ground. Exposing the thick, raised, and red scar from when the doctors saved her life. “If this is your love I don’t want it!” His eyes land on her scar; the sheer violence of it, the evidence of the numerous stitches, the proof the doctors should have given up. “Are you proud of this?” She whispers with a shaky voice.
She doesn’t want to notice his eyes softening, a regret mirrored in them. They whisper ‘no’ back to her. Hannibal takes a step towards her and she raises the knife, shaking her head.
“I used to love you.” Abigail swears she can see a tear roll down his face, cutting through his human mask. “I let you kill me because I loved you, because with you I knew my death was inevitable. And for a split second, I thought we were gonna walk out of there.” Hannibal adverts his eyes from her, she can see the tears in his eyes clearly now and stands violently shaking trying to repress her own. “That I didn’t have to die in a kitchen after all, that you could choose to save me from all of it. That you could be better than my dad.”
Hannibal’s eyes find hers again, her shaking has finally stopped.
“But you’re not, you’re not half the man he was.” She turns on her heel and walks to the door, leaving her scarf discarded on the floor.
“Abigail,” Hannibal says. She feels as if she can finally breathe again, no more breath escaping through the cuts across her throat. “Abigail.” She reaches the door and twists the handle, looking at him over her shoulder.
“You robbed me of my life when you called that morning, I want you to live with that fact.” She doesn’t bother to look long enough to catch his reaction, she pockets the bloody knife and closes the door behind her. Abigail descends the steps and Hannibal doesn’t. With deep exhales Abigail trudges through the woods and snags her gun from the tree it was rested against, slinging it over her shoulder.
She surveys the woods; deep and damp and full of life, and walks through them with care to avoid the various plants sprouting from the earth on her way to her car. Abigail only cries the second she gets in her driver seat, after laying her rifle on the backseat. She cries her entire ride back to Baltimore.
Losing a dad, no matter how horrible a person he is, always hurts.
It takes the sun setting, rising, and setting again before she returns to Baltimore. It is still dark when Abigail arrives at the graveyard; which has always been her most consistent home.
She pulls back the blanket that she used to hide her rifle, picking up the sledgehammer she bought beforehand and rests it on her shoulder as she walks across the overly manicured grass.
Abigail had never seen her tombstone until now, using the flashlight from her phone to illuminate it. It looks like a normal tombstone, just like everyone else's. Her death date mirrors the date she had seen on their plane tickets, she blinks away the happiness she saw in Hannibal’s eyes when he booked the first class seats.
“My family requires nothing less.” He had said when Abigail commented on the price. In a time before Hannibal knew Will betrayed him and discarded their world she had wondered if she could get the window seat, it was a simpler time. She runs her fingers over the engraving of her name, tracing her last name over and over again.
Her grave wasn’t vandalized like her dad’s was, but like his it was never mourned over. Everyone who would have given her flowers or tear stained the stone knew she was alive, or was across the world and didn’t care, or planning to travel across the world, or laying on a hospital bed still with glass cuts all over. Abigail was never able to figure out if Alana had forgiven her before she vanished, she doesn’t expect her to.
She spins the sledgehammer in her grasp, running her hand over the unused and shiny metal head.
Her eyes fall to what is written below her name. ‘A bright young girl led so adrift. A light stolen by too many.’ The words sound like Alana’s in her head, maybe she had forgiven her. Her tombstone doesn’t announce her as a daughter, and she couldn’t be happier about that fact.
“You’ve owned enough of my life.” Abigail whispers, gripping the sledgehammer like a baseball bat. “You’re not gonna own my death too.” After an exhale to ready herself she swings, small cracks are born from the impact.
Abigail smiles like the way she imagined she would standing over Hannibal’s corpse. And she swings again, and again, and again. The sound of the heavy impact coursing through her bloodstream and falling into rhyme with her heartbeat. After all this time she is still surprised she has one.
Abigail adjusts her grip on the wooden handle, Hannibal’s blood still under her nails. That last swing is what it takes to topple the monument to a life she was never given the chance to live. Chunks of dark stone sit on the grass, gravel dusted over her clothes and hair.
The word ‘Hobbs’ stares back at her from the rubble. She will never be a Lecter, or even a Graham, but she is no longer her dad's daughter. Abigail pulls the sledgehammer above her head as far back as she can, before bringing it down with all the anger she has left at all three of the men that tried to father her.
She exhales with a smile and wipes the beads of sweat from her forehead, staring down at her creation. Abigail digs through the pile of stone until she finds a remnant of her first name, placing it nicely on top. When Jack hears about it he will know it was her, she needs to make sure Hannibal will as well.
Abigail searches in her pocket for a paper scrap with a phone number scrawled on it. Abigail grabs her phone and dials the number, pressing the phone to her good ear as she walks to her car. She opens the door and tucks the sledgehammer back in it’s blanket bed next to her rifle when the call is picked up.
“Freddie Lounds.” The redhead says over the line, surprisingly Jack managed to even keep Freddie in the dark about her survival.
Abigail spouts out the address of the cemetery first, she can hear recognition over the line. “Something you should report on there, you’ll need your camera.” Abigail hangs up before Freddie can say anything and hops into her car, finally driving to her apartment. She can’t wipe the grin off her face, imagining the Tattlecrime article that will get posted. Hannibal never misses an upload.