Abigail Hobbs is a survivor. (laniidae) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-08-03 05:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, abigail hobbs |
Who: Abigail Hobbs Lecter - Solo Narrative.
What: The dreams are messing with her head.
When: August 3rd, around 4AM.
Where: Chez Lecter.
Rating: NC-17 for the triggery stuff mentioned below.
Trigger Warnings: NPC character death, gore, molestation, incest, older man / younger woman relationship - everything ever?
Status: Complete.
It's like being gaslit by her own subconscious. When Abigail jerks awake in the bed she shares with her father-lover Hannibal, she claps a hand over her mouth to muffle the gasp that's trying to escape. Looking down at Hannibal, he's still stretched out next to her, he's still sleeping, and that's good. She doesn't want him to see her broken like this, too raw, too naked. She wants to be beautiful for him, strong and sleek. She wants to hide the weakness that seems to be coming from inside her, like it's leaking out of a crack that she didn't even know existed.
Tiptoeing out of the bedroom in the undershirt she stole from Hannibal because it smells like him and looks better on her anyway, Abigail makes it to his study before the tears start to fall down her cheeks. They're just nightmares, she tells herself, but they're not just anything. They're the reason she has the broad scar on her neck, the scar that Hannibal peppers with kisses and bites as if he could somehow will the scar tissue there into normalcy. The dreams are real on some level, in some reality, and it's like looking into a mirror that's fogged over. She sees herself but not quite, the condensation beading over her features, changing warm blue eyes into hollow ones.
The same dream as ever, of course: Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the father that Abigail remembers fondly, the man who cared for her and taught her how to read, the man who told her that she should stay home and work on homework the day he and her mother died in their sensible, safe sedan. Garrett Jacob Hobbs as Abigail remembers him was a man who'd have been scared to raise a hand to anyone, who was meek and quiet.
But through the mirror, somewhere, in some universe, the man who raised her for fourteen years is a predator, teeth all sharp and shiny like a crocodile's. Once he snuck into that Abigail's bed, held her close until her flesh was the same temperature as his, his rough carpenter's hands skimming over her stomach, to the hem of her panties until dream Abigail started to cry. He left, disgusted with himself, and Abigail through the mirror was forced to find girls that were nothing more than puppets, surrogate Abigails for her father. She'd give them to him like so much chum, throwing them into the pond where crocodile Hobbs waited with his shining, perfect teeth, never letting any part of them go to waste.
But none of it was enough. Mirror Hobbs still killed Mirror Abigail's mother, still sliced Abigail's throat. Even in the dream Abigail can't shake the feeling that somehow, that was karma, something that dream Abigail deserved for giving her father so many pretty brown haired, blue eyed victims. Dream Abigail wonders if she'd just let her father have her, how many lives would she have saved? They were working on the ninth when he slit her throat, when he worked the curve of the knife just below her ear.
But the scar isn't just in the dreams. Abigail who hasn't gone through the looking glass runs her fingers over it when she's alone, pressing her fingers into the bruises that Hannibal leaves there over the knotted scar tissue. She woke one night with it, and she can't help but see it as a brand: Monster. It was like affirmation when she dreamed that Mirror Abigail lived through her father's attack, that she gutted some strange boy in her living room. Tiny white fingers around a knife too large for her hand, pressing the blade into his belly, just above his belly button, dressing this deer in boy's clothing.
And that's what scares Abigail awake. The sick sensation of tissue parting under her hands, of blood pitterpattering onto her shoes. It mixes together with her memories of her father, the quiet Garrett Jacob Hobbs that had insisted on buying the minivan he'd died in because it had such a good safety rating. What scares Abigail awake is the blending of her waking and dreaming lives, of the Abigail who works in a joke shop and has a best friend who's the sweetest, quietest boy in the world and the Abigail who is quiet and reserved and locks herself in her room so her father won't look at her too much.
She doesn't realize she's bitten down so hard on her lower lip that it's gone bloody, that her hands are balled into fists. She's sitting barely clothed in Hannibal's favorite chair, crying and gritting her teeth into dust. Willfully, she separates the girl behind the mirror from the girl standing in front of it until they're separate again, until the just dreams ebb back into the ether. Padding into the bathroom, feet stepping on the wooden planks of the floor that squeak the least, Abigail opens the medicine cabinet and fumbles for the bottle of Lunesta that her father keeps hidden. Shaking out two, she takes them with a handful of water from the tap, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
When she climbs back into bed, she can hear Hannibal's breath catch until she wraps her arms around his waist. He moves into her touch, rolling over to wrap his arms around her again. She smiles a little to herself, closing her eyes and nuzzling back into his embrace, into the life that she's chosen.