[ closed ] Will catch-all. Conceal, don't feel~

[glumshoe]

Who: Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter (NBC), Abigail Hobbs, Frederick Chilton
Where: The Gardens, Will Graham's room, Frederick Chilton's room
When: May 17th-19th
Rating: R for talk about violence, possible graphic imagery, & nonconsensual use of drugs (thanks Frederick). rating will escalate as needed.
Summary: The pains of harboring a dual nature. The event takes a toll on our unstable hero, who slowly shifts from the gentler side of the cravings spectrum to the other. Hannibal encourages Will to make like Elsa and -
The Story:

Day 1: afternoon The Gardens

[ Sometime after Evelyn leaves and Will is... freshened up, his nerves settle enough better gain a foothold over his cravings, at least temporarily. He sits on the bed for some time, hair drying into messy curls, breathing slow and feeling his heart stutter its pulse from the deepest core to furthest edge of his body like an engine whose parts he couldn't fix fully, but it limps along anyway.

It wasn't enough. He likes Evelyn, but he isn't so viscerally attached that the brief connection they share could replace the ones violently hacked off where he came from. Neither could he have expected her to. This event's curse forced the issue and then punished for not reaching far enough. The craving for closeness would go unslaked, put into remission and then come back stronger unless he does more or satisfies another hunger altogether.

Will rocks onto stiff legs and clicks his tongue at his pets, holding the door open for them to file out into the hall.

Meaningful history. It was worth a shot to see if the cravings could be put to rest, and since she came, Abigail has rarely left his thoughts. Their contact has been few and far between, and Will has to swallow the suspicion that Hannibal has resumed his influence over her as though he'd never led her to the slaughter.

At the gardens, Will spends all of a few agitated minutes halfheartedly playing with the dogs until he pulls out the device to do what he's wanted to since waking up today. ]

To Abigail Hobbs:
Hey. Just wanted to check in on you.

This is your first event, and you've probably noticed, but things can get hectic in pretty short order. If you need anything, I'm around the gardens with the dogs and piglet.

-Will

Day 3: morning Will's Room

[ Will takes stock of the past several days with chilling detachment. Sam Winchester, then Hannibal Lecter the younger, both subject to the urge that the event has done nothing but mount, brick upon brick upon brick of a building that deserves demolition. With any luck, his Hannibal Lecter will one day be crushed inside.

There's no one more knowledgable on the subject. Perhaps it's fitting that it would die with Hannibal.

Until then, with his own efforts at harnessing his own fury unsuccessful, insight may be needed. Will finds his communicator, dialing Hannibal's code in while his other hand hangs limply off the bed, ignoring the tentative doggie licks at his fingertips. ]

Memory serves that I am not required to report violent thoughts to my psychiatrist, but it is strongly encouraged in order to receive effective treatment. [ Will pauses, the crackle of a single deep breath audible over the line. ] I've been having violent thoughts.

Day 3: evening Chilton's Room

[ Will doesn't know why he's here. He has to assume that an increasing will to commit violence has to, at a point, culminate in someone actually being pummeled and if Hannibal Lecter was not to be the subject of this particular expression, it would have to be Frederick Chilton.

He's ignoring the part where Chilton had sent him a text message to meet him here. Bending to his wishes under Will's (mostly) uncompromised autonomy seemed the worst kind of betrayal to himself, but Will's inability to suppress his curiosity wouldn't leave him alone, wondering about what Frederick's intent was in claiming he'd helped recover his memories. Aside from attempting to manipulate Will into trusting him

Pressing his lips together, Will raps on the door with possibly less enthusiasm than would be needed to reach the furthest corners of the chambers. In the event that Will has a viable excuse to get out of this. ]

Comments

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail has been avoiding most people since she arrived here, but Will in particular. There are a variety of reasons for it: he has this habit of acting like he can tell her what to do, has this view of her that she finds completely restrictive. (She wonders if she'd mind quite so much, if she didn't wish in some small place in her mind that she were more like the girl Will seems to think she is.) Underneath all that, though, the reason she's been keeping her distance is guilt.

It was only very recently, from her point of view, that Will worked out that she'd killed Nicholas Boyle. So what must he think of her now? Abigail isn't really sure she wants to know the answer to that question. So she'd been dodging him, and to his credit he's left her alone, for the most part. More than he used to do, she thinks.

She should be grateful for that. So she doesn't quite know why, when he says she can come find him if she needs anything, she immediately tucks Freddie-the-piglet under her arm and heads out to the gardens. Abigail heard the announcement like everyone else, but she doesn't make the connection that whatever the craving is might be something intangible. She's just... in the mood to see Will. Wanting to confront him about the whole Nicholas Boyle debacle rather than keep worrying and avoiding the issue.

When she sees him, her greeting is a neutral, "Hey," as she sets Freddie down to go greet the other animals.

[glumshoe]

Thinking of Abigail with clarity is a situation that has worsened since her death. It's a problem that can be likened to a brand of object impermanence, that the things that happened are real as long as the locus of their committal is before him, but the vacuum Abigail leaves in his heart and reason is too forgiving, rose-colored glasses stained too red to sustain rational thought. Vengeance has an urgent, galvanizing effect.

Will can see the circumstances of Nick Boyle's death clear as day, picking out the strings it presented Hannibal with. The same ones that he used to bind Abigail, prevent her self defense when he'd come to tie off the last loose end of his frame up. In that kitchen, Will could hear her quiet sobs and the soft rush of blood fanning across the floor that she was seemingly destined to die on.

"Hey."

The reality of her is staggering.

Will straightens, palms run across the tops of his thighs as he ambles a few steps closer with a faint, awkward smile.

"Didn't know you got one of them, too," he says, deciding the piglets are a neutral enough topic.

[thehobbsgirl]

"Hannibal gave her to me."

Abigail breaks eye contact with Will almost immediately, watches Freddie nosing in the grass without speaking for a few moments. Will has this way of looking at her that is so laden with expectation and emotion. It's too intent, too piercing. In her current state of mind, Abigail thinks she sees a glint of accusation, too. Is it really there, or is she projecting?

"Never had a pet before."

There's an impulse in her chest, tugging at her, telling her to confess, to seek forgiveness. Abigail doesn't quite understand why she wants it, only that she does, urgently, and from Will in particular. Perhaps it's because he was the only one who had never doubted her, even though he should have. Perhaps it's because he thinks he got inside her father's head and understood every part of him, but he didn't see the part of him that made her complicit.

"Actually that's a lie," she adds, still not looking at Will, "When I was in elementary school we had a class pet. A guinea pig. A different kid was supposed to come in every day and feed her in the morning before class. Except on one of my mornings I came in and she was dead. I didn't realize until I reached in the cage to pet her and she was cold."

Halfway through the story Abigail realizes what's happening, knows she should shut up already, but she can't seem to force herself. This is the first moment when it occurs to her that this compulsion might not be entirely organic - that perhaps the reason she can't stop talking has something to do with the event. The realization doesn't help her.

"I was so scared that everyone would say it was my fault that I panicked. I hid her behind the supply cabinet and told everyone that when I came in the cage door was open and she wasn't there. The teacher found her and said she must have fallen to the floor and hurt herself, and that's why she'd died."

The parallels to what had happened with Nick Boyle are unavoidable, which is perhaps why Abigail suddenly remembered this story: she hadn't thought about it in years. She looks up at Will quickly, bottom lip trembling faintly, searching his face for disgust or blame.

[glumshoe]

She does that, avoids Will's gaze. After she looks away he sucks in his top lip, head dropping to tug loose the ball Daisy has eagerly returned, who releases it and uses the chance to slobber affectionately on Will's face. Almost like a consolation prize.

"Hannibal has been there for you for all sorts of firsts."

A sobering observation, but Will keeps his inflection flat, forbidding as much accusation as he can. What Will does is observation, a conduit of vision, and what he's viewed has been as through a looking glass that Abigail keeps between them. In spite of this what he feels for Abigail can't be resentment, but an unconditional love that he can't deny has its roots in Garrett Jacob Hobbs' love, grown into its own organism, a black tree with antler tines for branches and maybe flowers to bloom, when the conditions are right. Some day.

He hurts for her unconditionally, too. He listens as if to absorb her pain and fright into himself, to bring her closer, to free her of it. Wonderland could be her chance to live outside of her father's shadow and just - be a girl. Something about today makes it seem achievable, that by telling Will this he's allowed a half step nearer.

She's looking for guidance and Will is looking for her. Daisy bumps his hand insistently, jarring Will out of another long look at Abigail's fragile state. He throws the ball with a little more force than necessary out into an open area, waiting for the dogs to give chase so he has time to consider.

"Nicholas Boyle wasn't a guinea pig, Abigail." A thread of firmness runs beneath it, but Will's words hold are weighted with unparalleled compassion. "Nicholas Boyle wasn't innocent, either."

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail watches out of the corner of her eye as Will patiently lets the dog lick at the side of his face. Her father hadn't been fond of dogs. He was the one who had lain down the no pets rule in the household. It is a small incongruity in the way Abigail is accustomed to thinking about Will. She'd never consciously considered whether or not he would like animals; somehow, she'd just assumed he would be the same as her father. Apparently not.

If she does discern any hint of accusation in his voice, she assumes that it is meant for her, and not Hannibal. After all, Hannibal had only been there to help her hide the body. She had been the one with the knife.

"He killed Marissa." She almost spits the words. All it takes is her name to dredge up the dark, ugly sediment of her grief and rage. When she thinks about her friend's body, stripped and displayed, she wishes she could do it all over again. Regret and guilt come in the wake of that tide of anger, and her voice is smaller as she continues, "I thought he was going to kill me, too."

Abigail risks a glance at Will, and his expression is so open, so full of quiet understanding, that Abigail feels something twist painfully inside her chest. She laces her fingers together, knuckles going white. "Hannibal told me you knew."

But he doesn't know it all - not the worst of it. The way Will said Nicholas wasn't innocent seems to her a kind of forgiveness, almost a blessing. But is it a blessing she deserves? Abigail's throat feels suddenly tight, her heart beating too fast in her chest. Even if she deserves some measure of understanding for that murder, it is not her worst sin. Would Will be so quick to compassion, if he knew about the others? Knew what she had facilitated?

The truth seethes somewhere just under her skin, pressing to be let out.

"He's not the only one who isn't innocent."

[glumshoe]

Another lie moldering between them. How much could he say about Marissa Schurr's death and keep the brittle trust she extends him? He can't rescind that blessing so quickly after giving it without risking more than he wants to, and - and, it is simple, boiling out the nuance when it suits him. Abigail was raised in an environment of fear for the last several months. Abigail learned the tools of the trade from her father. Nick Boyle attacked her. Nick Boyle was killed. Simple, digestible, acceptable. Will isn't sorry that Nick Boyle died that Abigail may have lived. Will is sorry that he couldn't keep it that way.

Left to figure it out on his own, pressured between Jack's bullish scrutiny of Abigail and Will's own insistence on her innocence, and brushing against the intricate threads that Hannibal weaved, lies spun from sugar and dark. He knew. Hannibal would never have been so sloppy, and so the body's unearthing had to have been Abigail's doing, the ties that bind all the stronger for her act of rebellion. It's not a boast to say that Will would have found out eventually, no matter how prettily and neatly Hannibal lied. The truth is much easier to spin into a hook from which Will would choose to hang himself in her name.

"Yes." The instinct to come to her and cover her hands like before is overwhelming. It's not a conversation she'd remember, one of their last, but Will's balance between calm and dread shudders at what's to come, the confessions that Abigail will suffer. A cleansing fire steels his bones, clenched into fists at his side, pulling taut against the ache to reach out and physically push away what her father has made her do, and what it's done to her: made her guilty to have survived.

Will steps nearer, no longer the pale, shaking shade he once was. He can stand for Abigail, he can tell her what bird it is that's caged in her chest, beating its wings up and up until the words form. She has to say it or it isn't real. This isn't a pain he can spare her, but he can absolve it once it's out in the open.

"Abigail. Whatever you say will not go beyond me." It already has, Hannibal already knows.

[thehobbsgirl]

Abigail might not be a profiler for the FBI, and she might not have an empathy disorder, but as soon as Will tells her that whatever she says won't go beyond him, she knows that he knows. He must. He speaks so gently, with such calm expectation.

In that moment, she is certain he knows she was complicit. Hannibal had guessed. If Hannibal could guess the truth, Will could, too. Only he's not shouting, not snarling in disgust, not looking at her as if she doesn't deserve to live. She would have thought, if he didn't know, he'd reassure her (the way he's always done) that her father's crimes aren't her own, and if he did know, he'd turn on her with alacrity and hatred.

"I..." she begins, but her voice breaks. It would be so much easier if she just hated him and never wanted to see him and didn't care what he thought of her. She's tried to make herself feel that, but it never sticks. He's standing close to her, silent, waiting for her to say it even though he already knows. His patient silence tugs at a loose thread in her heart and Abigail feels herself beginning to unravel. There's no stopping the process once it's started. Her face starts to crumple, and in distress her features are childlike. Her words are barely audible, and she has the stillness of someone who is trying to keep from screaming.

"I always wondered... why didn't you know? You kept talking about how you got into my dad's head and thought the way he thought, so why didn't you know what he made me do?" A tear skitters down her cheek and she ignores it, looking quickly at Will and then looking away again. She can feel herself shaking.

Abigail had thought, perhaps, the second time she confessed it would not be so bad as when she had told Hannibal. That she might get used to it. But somehow (and she isn't sure if it's the effects of the mansion, or the fact that it is Will she is telling), the second time is, if anything, worse.

"He told me he was going to kill me, that he h-had to, but that he loved me too much, so he'd found a way to get around it. That... if he could kill a girl who looked like me, he wouldn't need to kill me. But he needed my help. He'd already picked the girl and he said he just needed me to help s-set the trap." Abigail's voice is shaking as the shameful details spill out, one after another, "He told me I had to t-talk to her so I could tell him when she would be alone, so he wouldn't get caught, so no one would know, especially not m-my mom."

Abigail stares at the ground, another tear falling. "I couldn't say no to him. I couldn't say no... when he said he had to kill just one more girl, and then just one more. After the fourth time he didn't even..." she trails off, biting her bottom lip and shaking her had from side to side. Is it really true? She could have. She could have told him she would never do such a thing. Could have just let him kill her, rather than all those other innocent girls. But she hadn't.

"I'm just as bad as all the killers you catch." She takes two steps away from him, hasty, unsteady. Abigail doesn't even notice herself nearly tripping over the animals. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her ribcage, as if she were trying to keep herself from scattering into a million pieces. Glancing up at Will, she waits to see the loathing in his face.

[glumshoe]

Why didn't he?

Resisting Jack Crawford's bullheaded insistence on his intuition certainly rubbed Will the wrong way, but like Alana, Will violently disagreed with his methods as well. That could do enough to set Will against it on its own, corroborating Will's profile of her victimhood because -

Because...

Leaving some small part of her untainted by what her father made her party to was so important to Will. Abigail had to have a chance to come back from it. Admitting it now, there is perhaps a growing shadow inside him that wants to believe she can still do it, because if she can, Will can crawl back from what depths he is descending toward.

Will wishes she wouldn't have to confess it, like she owes him although she does, she does have to feel a few threads of obligation to her secretkeepers. He deserves this much, to hear it from her lips and know that the good in her is the good in him and guilt still has its hold tight over them. Their path is deep and dark and beset with monsters, a monster they know the name of, or will. Emma Swan said that time freezes when they are taken from their worlds, but if that is possible -

It isn't impossible for Will and Abigail to come out on the other side of this intact, is it? Why would she be here if it were?

She turns away from Will and stops, and Will can't keep himself from fixating on her left ear until she turns back. All the air seems to leave his lungs when he's meant to respond, a fragility fracturing his expression, compassion mingling with distress and a calm Will has despite it all. Knowing made all the difference this time. Knowing and being of clear mind and vision. Will finds his tongue.

"You are... and have always been a victim of circumstance." He wets his lips, wanting that to sink in for several seconds. "What you did wasn't fair, or right, or good. But you understand that. The choice that he gave you was a choice of survival, and you adapted to overcome and surpass him. He's - he was sick. You're not. You're not sick or wrong for wanting to live."

It's Will's shame that he had to drive her to this point, or give the starting push and let the event drive her to it, borne on momentum, but the moment crystallizes his feelings toward her in a way he's finally capable of showing. Maybe too late for her. Maybe not. Even if this is just one Abigail from one glittering drop in life's stream, he wants her to know she's worth saving.

He doesn't want it to be her father's love she sees in Will. He is nothing like her father.

Will comes to her slowly, denying her the distance she put between them so he can gently cup her elbows, encourage her to relax the brutal grip she has on herself while he speaks lowly. "I didn't see it because I didn't want it to be true. I didn't want you any more involved than you already were because if you were, the FBI wouldn't let it go. Self-defense only goes so far. Then I knew and I couldn't kill your future, I -"

A soft, shuddering breath his drawn in, Will's eyes brighter than he's let himself feel in the weeks after his painful admission to Emma, bonding over lost children. One hand moves to fit under her ear, that ear, the last part of her he thought he'd ever see, and feels a sick, overwhelming pit bottom out in his stomach, meeting her tearful gaze again.

"You never had the chance to live. I wanted to give it to you."

[thehobbsgirl]

It's a relief, to hear Will state - without qualification - that what she did wasn't fair or right or good. Hannibal, for all that he has supported her, hadn't said those things. She gets the sense, based on his reaction to her murdering Nicholas Boyle, and a general, unacknowledged unease that sits perched in the back of her mind, that he might not even agree with them. But, for the first time, Abigail gets a real glimpse of Will's uncompromising moral and ethical backbone. To her, he had always seemed deluded, halfway between dangerous and blind. Yet he acknowledges her victimhood, as Hannibal did, without attempting to soften the horror of her actions. It's what she needs, though she didn't know it until right that moment.

It must be his empathy, but he knows just the right thing to say, for once. She fears inheriting the worst of her father - through nature and nurture - and the fear is like a wound festering. The event is fueling her reaction, but beneath the amplification is a genuine need and a genuine relief. Will, who knows all about sick minds, doesn't think that hers is, even in full knowledge of what she's done. It matters. She feels as if the ground's shifted under her feet, become more solid.

She doesn't pull away when he touches her arms, loosens her grip around herself. Abigail is still crying hard, but that feeling of precariousness, as if she were about to tip over some edge, abates.

The possibility of the FBI doesn't seem as distant to Abigail as it does to Will, who was drawn from a time when that investigation was, conclusively, over. Abigail still worries about returning, about Jack Crawford's unrelenting persecution, but those are concerns for another day. For now, she is trying to wrap her mind around this step she has taken, around the fact that Will knows and is still standing close to her, her hand o the side of her face. The look on his face is completely unreadable, but Abigail thinks it isn't blame, isn't hatred, and that's more than she had hoped for.

Hesitantly, but deliberately, Abigail drops her forehead to Will's shoulder. It is easier than looking at him, and it is a kind of closeness that she craves, right now. She lets herself cry for a while, no more needing to be said, or heard. Once she has exhausted her tears, a strange emptiness filling her, she finds herself speaking again, more truths spilling out unchecked. These are not as painful, not as raw as the truth about her guilt.

"I thought my best chance to have a life was if you stayed away from me." The words feel strange as she says them: not anything she'd ever expected to admit to Will's face. Just one of those things she'd assumed would remain between them, unspoken, keeping them distant. She doesn't feel distant from Will, now. Whether that will remain true, whether it is all her or some of her induced hunger for closeness and understanding, is anyone's guess. "If you were as good as they said you were, it was only a matter of time until you realized what I'd done."

Abigail wipes some of the moisture from her cheek, but does not take her head from Will's shoulder. "Hannibal said you wouldn't turn me in because you thought of me as- as 'the one pure thing in your life', but I'm not pure, and I don't want to be the one thing in anyone's life."

That was what her father had always said - how she was his, the center of his world, how she shouldn't leave for college because it would leave him with such an emptiness. She is just beginning to see now, after months away from him, after the rigmarole of her sessions with Dr. Bloom and others, how sick that thinking had been. How valuing her that much, focusing so much of his identity on his idea of her, had been part of his pathology. If Will knows so much about her father, he'll know why she recoils from that.

"If you keep my secret..." And she hopes, how she hopes he will, "...don't keep it because you think of me like that."

[glumshoe]

" - if you stayed away from me."

Alone, the statement is gutting. There is warmth from it, like blood spreading from the wound and Will is unsure of whether to attribute it to his imagination, Abigail's tears, or the closeness that has him tipping his nose into the top of her head with his hand rubbing soothingly along her spine, akin to pulling her closer so that the knife might sink deeper. Paired with the rest of her thoughts, it clicks into place but doesn't stop the bleeding, hearing how quickly and easily Hannibal subsumed control of her, of him.

It was the smart move to use the truth. Entrapment and persuasion work better when holding hands with the truth, playing off Will's inherent nonbinary thought. He could believe that he could kill and have it be just, like he could believe that Abigail could kill and it wouldn't be her fault. It could be wrong, and it could still be correct. The possibilities exist side by side within him, all thoughts touching one another and no room in his skull for what he loves to escape all that is stained. He loves Abigail and knows that she enjoys the power killing gives them. Both of them, ceaselessly borne between worlds that they can't comfortably be a part of, no peace without the darkness in them, no embracing of that dark without killing themselves.

Will blinks back to himself, her veiled accusation that he played at taking her father's place striking him center chest. He'd told Alana - no, he didn't. Letting it be a lie of omission, Will did set out to perhaps not be Abigail's everyone, but to be an important someone to her. It would be his desperation to keep her from pushing away that panicked her into pushing harder, terrified of being found out and she'd ran directly into the woods for the wolves to find her.

"I said it wouldn't go beyond me," he reminds her quietly, still unable to refute it as emphatically as he'd need to to be convincing. Hindsight harshens his past mistakes to brutal edges. How would he give her the freedom she desires and protect her from Hannibal? The prevailing atmosphere from their reunion in Wonderland was that she already thinks him overbearing.

He takes time to let the burning recede from his eyes and for Abigail's tears to slowly diminish, lightly settling hands on her shoulders instead to suggest freedom of movement first, maybe others to follow. "What your father did... what I don't want to do... is hold something over you to make you stay." Giving her shoulders one last squeeze, Will steps back with a look of tremulous encouragement for her. "You're not something in my life. I'd like you to be someone."

[thehobbsgirl]

Grateful as she is feeling, glad as she is that Will seems to have a better sense of how to handle her now, Abigail feels a momentary, almost reflexive spite. By telling her that he won't hold something over her and force her to do what he says, Will has unfortunately and vividly reminded her that he could. That she's given him a powerful tool to coerce her, if she should choose. Even if he doesn't choose to use it, she can't help a tiny flare of resentment that her freedom is a thing he is granting, rather than something she is free to take how and when she likes.

A moment later, she feels ashamed of herself. This is how it's going to be, from now on, for the rest of her life. No one will really know her as a person, deeply and intimately, without knowing what part she played in her father's murders. But that means that anyone she lets close to her will have power over her. She's going to have to get used to that feeling, to not sulk and place blame where it doesn't belong.

Just one more thing to get used to.

"Okay." Abigail's voice is low, a little hoarse from crying, and for once, entirely guileless. She takes a step away, but touches his elbow momentarily to show that it is not a withdrawal, not a refusal, merely a step.

"I'd like that."

It is a first. This feels different, far more monumental than allowing Will to become one of her guardians, or allowing him to visit her and talk to her. Up until this point, he was always the one moving towards her, she always the one moving away from him. He initiated contact. He told her how much she meant to him, told her what she could and couldn't do. And she'd never, never agreed to it, or encouraged it, in the way she had with Hannibal. Now, that's changed, and it feels like a new beginning.

end~

[glumshoe]

Will wishes he didn't have that kind of power. They're well on their way to a more honest relationship, though the path is beset with monsters and halls of mirrors, but the light brush to his elbow is all the confirmation Will needs to let some of the tension drain from him. Not an appeasement. A renewed start.

Smiling wearily, Will drops his gaze several feet off to Callum, whose ears perk as much as a floppy-eared breed can accomplish. The ball resting between his paws is snatched up, a single bounce off the pavement commanding both dogs to get back up for play time, but Will circles around to Abigail. He hands the ball to her, slowly spinning away and taking a seat on the fountain.