Work Text:
Abigail sits on the large bay window in the living room of the new apartment, staring out over the city. Il Duomo is across the street, and she watches the tourists bustling in and out of the cathedral like brightly colored ants. She counts them, wondering how many of them are going to get squashed.
Will and Hannibal aren’t home – they’re off strolling around the city together, probably also counting the ants. They’ve shrunk down to their size, blending into the background. Ants aren’t afraid of things that look like other ants.
They don’t want their prey afraid just yet. It spoils the meat.
She wonders what people would make of her, now, if she was still in the states. If, somehow, people knew she was alive. She’d probably fall into two categories: full-out Stockholm syndrome, or full-out crazy. A victim or a monster, all black and white, and no in between.
Though, if she’s being honest, there isn’t an ‘in between’ with her anymore. There might have been, before all this, but now she is much farther into the darker side of the spectrum. She’s not crazy, but she is a monster. A fledgling, but a monster nonetheless.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And she’s had three trees to fall from in her short life, only one of them biologically related.
She used hate it, being thought of that way. She’d spent her entire life trying to convince herself her father’s darkness isn’t hers. But it is, and it sits roiling in her gut. It had made itself known the minute she killed Nicholas Boyle, filling her with a kind of sincere calm you only get from something you truly enjoy.
She remembers how disgusted she’d been, how afraid. She realizes now she was more afraid of people discovering what she was really like, than what her kill could turn her in to.
Killing Nicholas Boyle didn’t turn her in to anything. She’s never been anything else. She must have known that, even back then. Mostro is the Italian word for it, she believes. That’s what they used to call Hannibal, when he was young. Il Mostro di Firenze.
There is no use fighting it, not anymore. That word clings to her like a skin. But she had spent months hiding with Hannibal, getting used to it. Sure, it’s a bit of an ugly covering, but hers is an ugly life, to people on the outside.
To her, it’s finally beautiful. And really, that is all that matters.
_____
They walk in the door love struck, as always. It’s remarkable almost, how they’ve grown into each other like poison vines pushing through old houses. Left to themselves they’ve overtaken each other, toxicity ceasing its inward trajectory, instead pushing towards the outside. They no longer hurt each other, they just hurt other people. Together.
She’s never see two people shape themselves around each other like they have. It’s not just love Abigail sees between them – it’s pure devotion.
Will walks behind the couch she’s sitting in and ruffles her hair, and Hannibal asks what she wants for dinner. Abigail smiles to herself. In this city, no one knows about their skeletons, and they are picture perfect domesticity because of it. They play house to the tee, and in the interest of self-preservation Abigail plays along. Or rather, she played, past tense. She’s not really playing anymore. She would be lying if she said she isn’t happy here, happy with them.
The time for make believe ended when they left the country, and she realized she didn’t feel forced to go with them. She is stepping on solid ground again, after months of walking on eggshells. The idea of her death no longer comes from the sets of hands preparing dinner in the next room.
She watches them cook together from her seat.
They’re not her fathers, neither of them are. And in reality she’s only known them for an extremely short while. But she trusts them, somehow. More than she trusted her own father, even. She didn’t always. She used to be afraid. But that has all fallen away.
Maybe it’s because they aren’t killing carbon copies of her. They’re just killing. She’s not bait anymore. She holds the line along with them.
Her dad did love her, she knows that. She loved him too. She just never quite trusted him. Deep down in her gut there was always something telling her that someday, she would be next. And she was right.
She gets up to set the table.
______
It’s interesting what you hear when people think you can’t speak a language. It’s true, her Italian is broken. She speaks slow and carefully, like a child, and it’ll be a while before she is fluent. But that doesn’t mean she can’t understand when someone speaks to her, just that it is hard for her to speak back.
Understanding is the first step in learning a new language, though people often seem to forget that.
Gossip about her flings around the crowded classroom, and they have no idea she knows exactly what they are saying. Not all of it is nice, and it picks at her old fear of being found out.
Some of it is, though. Comments like “she seems sweet,” and “she moved here from the states, give her a break,” float past her ears, and she’s thankful.
Hannibal had suggested enrolling in school two weeks after they had arrived. First and foremost it was for appearances sake. They were a married couple with a teenage daughter, and teenage daughters must be in school.
Abigail, only just 19, is on the cusp of higher education, but still fits into the last stage of scuola secondaria. Will had also thought it was a good idea, saying she should make friends.
Abigail had agreed, she wants a future, something of a life, but made no promises on the subject of friends. She can be an odd bird, sometimes. Even before all of this there was something that seemed to whisper ‘not right’ about her. And now she has much more to hide.
But, Abigail is nothing if not extremely adaptive. Her mask may have cracks, but she’s not Will. As much as she loves the man, his lack of normalcy is like a beacon, especially in the absence of Hannibal.
Her first day had been extremely uncomfortable, and full of excited, prying questions from her peers. She’d shrunk back when they’d asked her about her life in America, and things had only escalated from there.
She’d recovered the next day. Her sweetness earned her about 3 friends, give or take, and the questions died down to background murmurs. She genuinely likes her friends, and she’s starting to like school.
She’s adjusting.
Will is proud.
______
“Why do we never study at your house?”
Luca nudges her arm. They’ve just finished studying at another friend’s house, like their group always does on Thursday nights. Before Abigail they would rotate between their three houses, and after Abigail they did the same.
“My parents are pretty private people. Their lifestyle wasn’t…accepted, back in America.” She’s said this excuse too many times to count. It’s not exactly a lie.
Luca always asks her questions like this, every Thursday, without fail. Her other friends say he likes her, that’s why he takes the long way home, so he can spend more time with her. He picks her brain every time, and each week his queries have gotten more and more personal.
She knows he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s not trying to pry, she just wishes he wouldn’t sometimes.
Her friends tease that she should date him. She thinks she would, if she was anyone else. Luca is attractive, and he is bubbly and kind. It’s not that he isn’t for her, it’s that she isn’t for him.
“What is with the dinner parties, then, ah?” He asks playfully, his accent pleasant and rich. He always uses English when he walks with her, despite the fact that she doesn’t need him to anymore. She’d asked him why, once. He’d told her with a smile that he needed to practice, just like she did.
She shrugs in answer. “They like to entertain.”
“So they will entertain their friends, but not yours? Doesn’t seem too fair, to me, Abby.” He chuckles a bit; his comment was made good-naturedly, only meant to tease.
Abigail looks at her shoes. “Luca...”
He holds his hands up, placating. “Fine, fine. I will drop it.” And he does.
They walk silently for a little while, hands in respective pockets against the evening chill. Abigail pulls her gloves on, fingers starting to go numb.
“What was it like for you back in the states?” Luca asks.
Abigail’s stomach turns slightly. “Luca, stop.” It’s a plea as much as it is a warning.
“What? You never talk about it. Concetta says you do not like to, not even with her.”
Abigail stops walking, her face severe and tone biting. “Concetta is right. Drop it, Luca.”
“Oh come, Abigaille!” He almost whines, with an exasperated hand gesture, beginning to walk again.
“No Luca! Please just leave it alone.” Something boils in her gut. Her hands twitch.
They reach the street where they always part ways, but Abigail continues to walk beside him. Something in the back of her mind has already made its decision, urging her along. It knows it’ll be easier if they go down a road she’s not supposed to be on.
“I just do not get it, what could have been that bad? Did you do something? Did your parents do something? Did someone do something to you? Abigaille, you know you can tell us, yeah?”
He keeps going, and he means well, he truly does. It’s why he doesn’t see it coming, doesn’t know he’s crossed a dangerous line, until there’s a knife in his throat.
_______
Abigail stares down at Luca, watches the blood seep out of his wounds and onto the alley she had dragged him to.
She hadn’t just killed him. She’d brutalized him.
Her face is splattered in blood. Her coat and gloves are ruined; they would have to be burned. Somehow, her shoes are spared.
She wipes her face on her coat as best she can, and folds it over her arm, shoving the gloves in the pockets. She shivers slightly, and the blood is seeping into her sweater’s arm, but it hides the evidence, temporarily.
She knows she can’t stay here long; she can’t be caught with him. So she leaves him there, taking back streets.
She walks with purpose, stiff and callous.
________
She makes it halfway home before rooting herself to the wall of an alley, unable to breathe. She can’t stay here, she has to get back. She’s normally home by 10 and now there’s a dead boy in an alley a few streets over and it’s 10:15 and if she’s not home soon eyebrows will be raised –
Abigail retches, dry heaving between her legs. She’s afraid of getting caught, and she feels nothing but that kind of fear, she’s never felt anything but that. Luca was mutilated by her hand and it made her feel something, but that something was not the terror at her actions that it should be.
Her old disgust at herself pours over her like acid, disintegrating any feelings of ease she’d had in this new life of hers.
It had been easy, to accept it, to be immune and happy, when she wasn’t directly part of the process. Will and Hannibal had immersed her in a life of violence, but she had never taken the final step. Not since Nicholas, and not for so little a reason. She’s almost been sheltered, in a twisted, horrible way.
Her feet are fused to their spot, and her head is spinning. But she needs to get home, so she sucks in a shallow breath and wills herself to move. There’s a good feeling that had cried out when her knife had first sliced flesh, and she grasps at it, prying it out of the deepest parts of her. She grips it like she’s trying to hold on to a kite in a hurricane, and lets it carry her home.
________
She reaches her building later than she should have, but not late enough for anyone to question.
The doorman in the lobby greets her cheerfully, always happy to see her. Abigail adores the man – he’s sweet and pleasant and loves his job. He’s been at it for 25 years.
“Ciao, mia bella! Come stai?”
“Ciao, Giuseppe. Sto bene.” Her response is calm, even toned and warm. It betrays nothing.
He smiles, fond, waving as she crosses the lobby. “Bene, bene! Buonanotte, Abigaille!”
“Buonanotte, signore.”
She walks to the elevator, coat slipping to reveal blood creeping up her sleeve. But the stains blend into the pattern, and Giuseppe’s eyes are too old to see them.
_________
Will opens the door before Abigail even takes out her keys. It’s later than she usually returns, and Will is always the worry wart when it comes to her.
Hannibal always tells him she can handle herself. And she can.
“These need to be burned,” is the first thing she says, handing Will her coat and gloves. The sleeve it was draped over is soaked, but no longer warm.
He stares at her, at the coat, and calls Hannibal over from where he’s seated in the living room. His voice is calm, but the tone is somewhat of a fallacy.
Hannibal walks over and asks, like an echo, to tell him what happened.
______
They’re at the kitchen table, Hannibal sitting catty-corner to Abigail, and Will standing behind him. Hannibal looks proud. Will looks vaguely concerned. This was, after all, a big step.
Baby’s first murder.
Abigail still isn’t sure how she feels about it. That in and of itself brings a fresh wave of revulsion. She should be sure. She should feel awful. She should be falling apart. But she isn’t.
“The body, is it still in the alley?” Hannibal’s hands are covering hers in an extremely parental gesture.
She nods, looking at his face. “I dragged him behind the garbage. They probably won’t find him until morning. I never walk down there. He goes his way and I go mine, about a block before.”
Hannibal nods, pride bursting at the seams. He’s made her perfect. “No one will suspect you. They will think it happened after you left him.”
The notion calms her, and something jumps and cheers inside her. She’s going to get away with it.
“So, Abigail, how did it feel?” Will asks the question this time. He already knows the answer, he knows how she felt about Nicholas Boyle, but he asks all the same.
There’s a long pause, the pair waiting patiently. This shouldn’t feel like a test, but it almost does.
“It felt….exhilarating.”
Their smiles are tiny, wicked things.
_______
Her composure slips a bit when she closes her bedroom door. She shouldn’t feel like this, she shouldn’t feel alive. Something like a strangled giggle escapes her and she clamps a hand over her mouth.
The word monster hisses at her, raking claws down her back, shredding the new skin she’d come to enjoy.
She’s not sure the concept had really sunk in, before tonight. It’s almost as though she had watched Will and Hannibal through a window. She had gotten the picture, she’d understood, but she was somewhat on the outside of it all, dancing on the edges of something barely human, and something entirely different. Abigail had toed the line her whole life, but now that’s she’s finally crossed it she’s not sure she really wanted to.
Her choices, her life, her family, everything she is at this moment is displayed in front of her like evidence in a courtroom, condemning her. It’s horrific, all of it. There’s nothing but black and white, and suddenly she’s wishing for shades of grey.
She could explain Nicholas Boyle away all she wanted, but she can’t with Luca. And she can never explain how much she enjoys it.
She’s happy like this, and the thought has her gagging over her toilet.
________
She’s not sleeping. Not that she really expected to.
Abigail pads into the kitchen. She can’t stay in her room, if she sits in one place she’s probably start screaming. Wandering around the apartment is a much better alternative.
It’s 3 AM, no one will find her out here. She doesn’t want them to.
_________
4 AM, and she’s staring out the large bay windows with a mug in her hand. She hasn’t moved in half an hour.
Her mind had decided suddenly at around 3:30 that it liked her body to stay in one place as it cranked and churned and tried to swallow the mess she’d gotten herself into.
“Abigail?”
Abigail starts, spilling tea and nearly dropping her mug. Will’s voice is soft, whispered and concerned. Her hands start to shake, and Will rushes over to steady her.
He takes the mug and leads her to the counter, depositing her in a stool and cleaning up her mess. She feels like a child. Though, maybe she still is.
He sits down next to her. “Why are you up?” He asks almost like he knows.
Abigail nears hysterics for a few beats before she answers. She hadn’t expected to get caught like this.
“You…you can’t go to Hannibal with this. He can’t – I don’t want him to know.”
Will nods, rubbing her back. “He won’t know, I promise.”
Silence, then: “Is this about Luca?”
Abigail nods. “I… I don’t know what to feel.” She looks at her hands.
Will looks at her, urging her to keep going.
And it’s like a dam breaking, once she starts she can’t stop, and she rattles off everything she’s thinking. She needs to tell someone, and the only person in the world who might understand is sitting next to her on a bar stool.
And he does understand, better than she even expected. They were cut from the same mold, her and Will. Hannibal’s mold.
They’d come out mostly perfect, a few cracks here and there. Their only difference is that Will has spent their time in Florence patching his up, while Abigail pretended they weren’t there, until one became so big she couldn’t hide it, and it threatened to break her.
Will walks her back to her bedroom – it’s 5 AM, and the sun has just started to grey the sky.
Abigail sits on her bed, watching Will’s retreating back.
“Will?”
He turns around.
“Why were you awake?”
He smiles. It’s the kind of smile a father would give his child, and Abigail calms under it. “I can’t always sleep. My head is still too…messy, for that. I had a feeling, too, that you wouldn’t be able either.”
“Thanks Will.”
He walks back over and kisses her forehead. “Try to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow.”
_______
Concetta asks her if she’s seen Luca, the next morning, frantic. His parents had called her, because he never made it home.
The rest of their friends join them, all equally worried.
Abigail feigns ignorance perfectly. She mimics her friends’ frenetic state, and no one is the wiser.
She calls Luca 8 times, in a rush, Concetta clinging to her arm like she always does when she’s nervous, willing him to answer. Abigail listens to his message recording 8 times, feeling a bit numb around the edges, like ice is threatening to freeze the shallow thrill in her stomach.
________
They find him that night. Her friends sob. Abigail does not, but her shock-stilled form convinces everyone she is having the appropriate reaction. The police think she’s trying to wrap her head around the idea, and failing.
This poor girl from the states, they think. She’s been through a lot. She was the last person to see him alive.
They assure her, as they assured her friends and Luca’s parents, that they will catch who did this.
Abigail sits in the police station, unmoving, and can’t believe she’s going to get away with this.
________
Luca is buried without a culprit being found. There is a vigil in the alley where his body was discovered, and Abigail goes. She holds a candle and sings with her classmates as they cry.
The investigation runs cold, and so does the self-loathing boiling in Abigail’s gut.
She’s fixing her cracks.
________
Abigail is happy. She’s on the inside of this life now; she understands what it means and what she can do with it.
Will had told her once that killing her father made him feel powerful. She understands that too.
Abigail walks towards the dining room table just as she sees Hannibal shove an ice pick through a guest’s temple. He stutters and blinks unevenly, brain threatening to shut down but unable to with a metal rod in the way.
She watches the man twitch while Will and Hannibal continue to eat their dinner.
Abigail walks up behind him and yanks out the pick, satisfied when his head clunks down into his soup bowl, blood running into the broth.
They smile at her, Will and Hannibal. She smiles back.