versusnurture | nineteen ♢ video

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nineteen ♢ video

[When the feed comes on, the first thing there is is a wall and half of a desk. Those people on board who've been inside will know it as Abigail's room. There's a small blood smear on the edge of the desk, another dark spot on the corner of the lens.]

[She doesn't turn it towards herself, but the camera does move towards the desk, is set down at the edge of it. Two hands appear in the frame, blood-caked, palm-up. There's blood under her nails, too, drier blood that's oxidized to a deep, almost black color.]

[She doesn't say anything. But after a moment, there's a strangled noise, and she knocks the camera off the desk. The briefest flash of dark hair and a pale face; then it hits the floor and shuts off.]

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Where -

[ - did that come from?

She may as well have slapped his hand away for how quickly his fingers recoil, his hand withdraws and he respects those wishes. Much as he wants to clasp her head within her two hands like he once did when he first arrived here, it's not his decision to make.

Apparently.

His hands go abruptly by his sides, fidgeting, so he can't even be tempted. ]

Where did you go?

Go?

[Her voice is distant, like it's coming through a tunnel. She didn't go anywhere, she was taken. Went willingly, her feet moving one in front of the other like a good girl's, but she was taken--was led--did not have a say in the destination. One place after another. They were all dark.]

[I went where he told me. She doesn't say it. Just gnaws her lip and looks down at her hands, picking blood out from under her fingernails.]

Do you remember the knife?

[Hannibal's knife, curved like a sickle. It looms large in her mind, larger than it was in life, until it's too big to fit in the room without cutting into her throat.]

The knife?

[ Which knife? There had been plenty but few significant. He remembers Garret Jacob Hobbs' knife as easily in his grip as it probably had occurred to Hobbs himself. He remembers his own knife, the one that had been used to implicate him in his trial, but that held no significance on the Barge; she was whole here, past her death, or -

So he thought.

He wants to touch again, fingers bristling at his sides as he wants to look her over, to make sure she's not actually wounded - it's not her blood, it can't be her blood - but her words echo in his head, don't touch, don't touch. ]

Is that what did that to you?

[ He doesn't remember. He's sorry and it reads in his voice. ]

The knife.

[She repeats it, like saying it again will make it clearer to him. Will make him come up with a memory he so clearly doesn't have. She touches her throat with bloody fingers--that--and nods, slowly. He's sorry. That counts for something.]

It was a curved blade. I don't remember what it was for, originally. Not a hunting knife. A kitchen knife. Or a gardening tool? I don't know.

It did this-- [She touches her throat again.] --and it . . .

[Her voice trails off into nothing very much as she reaches out to point at his stomach.]

It got you, too.

[When they first met here, Will thought she was a ghost. Now, pale and trembling and pointing at the lethal wound she saw but isn't there anymore, she really looks like one.]

[ He doesn't. He doesn't remember. But she remembers. She has blood on her hands and a harsh-faced memory of a blade that killed her, and he can remember her clear as day, "Hannibal slit my throat."

It got him, too. But he doesn't remember.

But she does.

She says not to touch but his hands move out at once, to slip underneath her hair and his fingers feel and he touches at nothing, a chasm, a blank spot where her ear used to be and he feels burned by it. He kept her alive. He kept her alive? ]

What did he do to you?

[ He asks at once, ignoring her bloodied hands pointed at him and holding firmly her head in his hands. ] What did he do to you?

[He touches her and she flinches. Flinches hard, even though last time he did he was trying to save her. It doesn't matter, intent doesn't matter: last time he touched her she died. Every time he touches her she gets closer and closer to death.]

[That and it's uncomfortable, him touching that absence of space, that abnormality. One of those reasons she wouldn't have wanted to go outside even if it had been safe to: she does not look like an ordinary girl anymore. She looks like someone who has experienced trauma. Who's fought and lost. She doesn't want people to see that, no.]

[She fights to get away, just for a moment, then stops. This isn't right. He hurt Hannibal, but he's here, he's here and it's--good. Probably.]

[She stops struggling.]

He didn't hurt me. [Well, he did--but that wasn't until later.] He just kept me safe. He kept me away. From people. He was going to help us--he was going to save us both.

I'm sorry, I had to die. It had to seem--like I died. Or else no one would believe, and they'd find me. That's what he said.

[She had to do what he said.]

[ Captor bonding. You bond with your captor, you survive.

You don't, you're breakfast.

It's not understanding why she did the things she did so much as it is understanding that she did them. How long has that been now that she's been the malleable clay in Hannibal's hands, once again leaving him too powerless - too oblivious - to stop it, something else he's missed.

Abigail is Will's Miriam Lass and he feels unsettled by how devastating that is, that feeling of being in Jack's shoes just for that split second. "That's what he said." He feels upset. But moreover he feels angry. He could breathe smoke. He could kill.

Instead, he keeps holding onto her as if he'll never let go of her again, never let her out of his sight if he can help it. ] Oh, Abigail.

[ That's what he'd wanted all along. One big, happy family and Will had led him right into it. He didn't just take everything from him, he'd marked it all as his own as well.

His hands slip, and he takes her wrists instead, lets blood-caked palms splay open. ]

Let's get you cleaned up. Please, and then -

[ Then you can tell him everything. Then they could figure out from there. Please. ]

[She considers struggling again. Even now, so much of what she does, how she reacts, is calculated, almost cruelly so. She looks into Will's eyes and wants to give him whatever it will take to get him to let go.]

[In the end, that's what makes her give in. Bond with your captor, you survive. In this moment, she doesn't see him as an ally. She sees him as something that wants to eat her alive, a psychopomp, a demon. A Judas.]

[She smiles at him, her lips trembling, a tear or two trickling down her cheeks. Yes, she'll go with him. Yes, she'll let him clean her up. Maybe later she will find a way to get him back.]

[Maybe later he'll find a way to redeem himself.]

Okay. [She takes his hand in hers and squeezes lightly, like she is very young and very innocent and not covered in blood and not a murderer. Like he isn't a danger to her; like she isn't a danger to him.]

[Let's all play pretend.]

Then we'll figure everything out.

[Everything and nothing. There is no resolution to this movement; there is no saving them. They can only huddle together and cry, or hurt each other in small, quiet notes, leading up to a grand crescendo, their conductor watching from the shadows.]

[ He hesitates, but he starts to lead her towards the bathrooms, first by the wrists - a guide - and then a hand at the flat of her back. ]

Come on.

[ It feels wrong in a way, off-kilter for reasons he can begin to explain. It's just different, it's a different kind of smile she smiles, tears running down her face. Abigail Hobbs, ever-changing and colorful in ways that he can never fully understand.

It's been some time since she's felt like "his", something shared instead. She's been taken from him, and then she's been taken away from him. This isn't the Abigail he knows. Who knows what's been jammed into her head along with everything else?

He understands the fact that the only reason he's probably alive right now is because of Hannibal's skewed "affection" for him. An attachment, a mutual understanding between the two, of sorts. He no longer has that mutual understanding between himself and Abigail, though he's not sure he ever has. Something different between them has been created, sets his veins alight and squares his jaw. ]

What did you do, Abigail?

[ A low voice, a voice meant to be a comfort even as he refers to the blood coloring her hands. The fear is easy to sense, an innate feeling. It's what starts to make his touches more minimal, the hand falling from her back. They just walk instead. ]

[What did she do.]

[She almost laughs. What didn't she do? She wonders if he knows about Alana; if he doesn't, she won't be the one to tell him. Not here, not now, not ever. She can't imagine that he'd be talking to her if he did know, much less leading her kindly away. Why be kind to the killer of someone you love?]

I stabbed Ben.

[She slows down, leaning back against Will's hand, and glances up at the ceiling, as if expecting to see something there.]

He surprised me. So I . . . stabbed him.

He said he'd be okay. He said he'd go get help, and then come back. In half an hour.

[Unconsciously she parrots his exact words to Will. It's weirdly comforting. Ben means what he says, she's pretty sure of that.]

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