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."
no subject
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."