Chapter Text
Mischa Lecter sat at the front window combing her long, blond hair, and waited for her brother to return home.
She watched two robins as they flit around her flower garden, splashing in the bird bath nestled amongst the rose bushes. The garden was her project, one suggested to her by her brother.
Mischa had planned the layout all winter, clipping articles from gardening magazines, ordering flower seeds, gathering gardening supplies. As soon as the winter frost had cleared she had leapt to work. It was satisfying work, digging and planting and weeding. She relished the dirt beneath her fingernails, the sun on her shoulders.
Mischa planted roses and chrysanthemums, lilies and zinnias. She planted a vegetable garden for her brother, with zucchini and tomatoes, peppers and herbs. After a long day of gardening he would greet her in the kitchen with an ice cold glass of lemonade and a kiss on her head.
“Well done, my industrious gardener. Soon your roses will be as beautiful as their caretaker.”
Hannibal's compliments warmed her from the inside, and she drank them down with the lemonade.
It was a quiet life, punctuated with the short visits from her brother, but Mischa was never bored. Her days were full of hobbies, from sewing to embroidery, to drawing and sculpting. Their secluded cottage had an extensive collection of books and films, of which she had barely scratched the surface. There was a standup piano in the study that she was learning to play. When Hannibal was home he gave her lessons.
Piano was not the only subject he instructed her in. During his absences she was assigned homework - history texts, literature, poetry, plays - which he would quiz her on upon his return. The lessons were not a bore to her - they were a joy, portals into other worlds and lives which she could hop through at a whim. Mischa loved to impress her brother with her newfound knowledge each time he returned to her.
She was now also allowed to go into the town by herself. Hannibal had bought her a bicycle which she rode to visit the grocery store or the cafe. Mischa was even friends with the barrista there, they liked to read the same books. They would greet each other and discuss Sense and Sensibility or Anna Karenina. Mischa rarely revealed anything about herself.
She lived for her brother's visits. He would only stay for a day or two and then he would leave, despite her protests. Mischa knew he had to leave so that she could stay safe, he assured her of that. Still, each time she tried to keep him for a little longer.
His visits were spent in the city, touring art museums, Hannibal showing her his favorite works. Or often they were at home, where entire days were consumed by Hannibal playing the piano for her enjoyment, or reading to her as she curled up next to him on the couch. When the weather warmed up, he brought home two easels, and they practiced painting the new blossoms in the garden.
Sometimes Hannibal brought a guest for dinner. Sometimes they were still alive. They would never make it back home again.
Mischa Lecter never wanted for anything, was not denied any pleasure in life. She never felt sorrow or pain, remorse or regret.
The sun was setting when Mischa saw her brother's Bentley pull up to the house. In an instant she was outside and throwing herself into his arms. He laughed into her hair, and rocked her back and forth.
“Mischa, Mischa. I've missed you too.”
She rested her cheek on the soft cotton of his summer jacket, and breathed in his comforting scent. Fine Italian soap and aftershave, the tiniest hint of coppery blood, and also something clean and sterile, medical. She knew there was someone in the car.
“Take these inside. I'll meet you in a moment.”
Mischa took the grocery bags he handed her and brought them inside, and proceeded to unpack their contents. She heard the trunk open, a heavy object being shifted around, and then the thud of the trunk closing.
Mischa hummed as she put away truffles, crème fraiche, shallots and red wine. Hannibal entered the front door, carrying a body. No, not a body – the young man was still alive, just heavily drugged. She watched the soft rise and fall of his chest as Hannibal took him into the basement. She did not follow.
With all of the groceries arranged, Mischa wandered over to the record player and browsed their record collection. She chose a collection of Chopin recordings, one of her favorites, and set the record into the player, gently placing the needle. The room immediately filled with the pleasant tones of “Ballade in No.1 in G Minor.” Mischa let the notes surround her as she waited for Hannibal to return.
How incredible, she thought, that music written over one hundred years ago was still enjoyed by people today. How many pianists had performed this piece over the decades? How many listeners had sat, enthralled with the melodic rise and fall of the very same notes she was listening to now? She felt time reaching backwards, the past and present compressing into one moment, all previous listeners merging through the web of time into the one girl sitting alone watching the record spin.
The Ballade ended and a Nocturne began. She heard her brother's footsteps as they ascended the basement stairs, and then approached her. She turned to smile at him, and he returned the smile as he took her hand.
“Mischa, come downstairs and meet our guest.”
She left the record playing and followed him downstairs.
The man was drowsy but awake, shirtless and bound to a metal chair in the center of the room. A single light hung over his head. Mischa could tell that his hair was once well groomed, before he had taken the trip in the trunk of the car. From his smooth, muscled chest and neatly manicured hands, she also knew that he took good care of his body. He is handsome, she thought, for someone who tried too hard.
“This is Jonathan Langley. Twenty-eight, newly hired legal assistant at a small but profitable law firm. Jonathan, this is Mischa. Say hello.”
Jonathan tried to raise his head to look ahead of him. He managed to briefly look at Mischa before his head flopped down again.
“...'lo...M'sch...,” was all he could muster.
“Such a promising young man. Unfortunately, Mischa, he has been very rude. Unforgivably so, I'm afraid,” Hannibal said, retreating into the darkness next to the chair, where his tool table was. When he returned, he held a sharp hunting knife.
“Mischa, if this young man were to relentlessly pursue you, even after you had expressed your disinterest in him, would it be acceptable for him to call you names? Harass you in public? Slip sedatives into your drink? Attempt to assault you?”
Mischa clenched her fists together and stared at Jonathan, imagining him committing the acts Hannibal described. She shook her head with a violent jerk.
“Our dear Jonathan would disagree,” Hannibal said, and crossed the room to stand next to Mischa. “Yes, Jonathan thinks that the world is his playground, and all who wander in it are his playthings. He is privileged to do with them as he likes – especially women. Controlling women makes him feel powerful. No, he is not used to them fighting back – and that is what I saw, Mischa, someone fighting back. She almost paid dearly for it.”
Mischa could feel her pulse quicken with rage. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Her eyes never left Jonathan, who was now looking up, the veil over his eyes slowly lifting to reveal the terror underneath.
Hannibal closed his hand around her wrist and lifted it. In her empty palm he placed the knife, and then closed her fingers around its handle.
“Mischa, show Jonathan what it means to be powerless.”
Jonathan was now awake enough to understand what was happening. A stream of panicked pleading and begging poured from his mouth. Mischa advanced towards him, knife in hand.
She stopped right in front of him, her knees almost touching his. She put a hand under his chin, and tilted his head up to look at her. His eyes were red, snot and tears dripping into his mouth.
“Jonathan, do you think I'm pretty?”
Jonathan nodded and then shook his head, unsure of what the right answer was. He continued to beg for his life. Mischa stroked his hair.
“Shh, it's alright. It doesn't matter. I don't want you to ever look at me again.”
She took the knife and plunged it deep into his right eye.
Mischa felt no remorse or regret. She felt no guilt or fear.
After dinner, Mischa and Hannibal retired to the living room. She entertained him by playing the piece she had been practicing on the piano, showing him her new drawings, updating him on the progress of her garden. He listened attentively, delighted in her successes, and offered encouragement in her struggles.
As the night darkened, and Mischa felt her body begin succumb to exhaustion, she rested her head in her brother's lap as he read to her. Tomorrow, I’ll have him all to myself, she thought, and she fell into a deep, calming sleep.
---
She follows the wolf through the valley, his dark frame lurking through tall grasses. He guides her to a clearing with a pond full of murky water. She stops behind him, but he turns and beckons her to the water, so she steps towards the edge of the pond, and peers into it.
She does not see her reflection, nor her shadow. Instead she thinks she hears a voice, a girl's voice coming from beneath the surface. The water is completely still, and yet the voice grows louder, its tone persistent but distorted. She can make out a few words – name... killed... find... – but the rest is lost in the water.
She had heard the voice before - she had distinct feeling she heard it in another dream - but she couldn’t place it.
When she awoke, the dream had nearly dissipated from her memory, and Mischa was not troubled by the voice beneath the water.
She spent the morning gardening, in a paint-splattered sundress. The sun baked her bare shoulders as she labored, pulling out weeds and pruning wilting blossoms. Distantly, she could hear Hannibal playing the piano inside the house. When she was satisfied with the level of weeds, she stepped back to admire her work.
Mischa wanted to make a bouquet for their kitchen table, something to surprise Hannibal with. It needed to be chic and elegant, made with her best flowers. Her eyes fell on her crocus roses – creamy apricot in color, they were just barely in bloom, and gave off a delicate sweet fragrance. They would be perfect. She picked up her shears and began to snip away, gathering a small collection of the most pristine buds.
She was very careful to avoid the thorns on the branches, but still, Mischa pricked herself as she grasped a stem. A drop of blood formed on her thumb, and she hissed at the pain, sucking on the wound.
Pain. She remembered the sensation from a long time ago, in a different life. Pain, was this what it had felt like? She inhaled the sickly sweet aroma of roses into her throat. The scent met the blood on her tongue and changed into something else, something barely remembered.
Pomegranate. Darkness, blood, and sweet pomegranate.
The garden in front of her began to disappear, swallowed up by a rising tide. A pinpoint of light hovered on the horizon before her, and she felt herself sucked down a tunnel towards it. Images rushed past her, through her, flooded her vision.
– a knife thrust into the belly of a deer, then the belly of a girl. Blood in her mouth, the pain of biting into her finger, tearing open flesh. Her neck sliced open, blood on linoleum floor, darkness surrounding her, three bodies writhing together as she watched. An ice cold drink, a searing burn on the side of her head, a voice repeating over and over again in her head before being thrust away, locked far away in a box deep beneath an ocean of water –
My name is Abigail Hobbs. Hannibal Lecter killed me. I have to find Will Graham.
She grasped onto the words. Her mind emerged above the surface.
Mischa Lecter was gone. In her place, Abigail Hobbs sat, trembling next to the rose bushes.
Her first instinct was to throw up breakfast. Her second was to collapse into the dirt and cry. She gathered herself immediately. Don't cry Abigail, he'll smell it on you. He'll know something is wrong. Get yourself together.
She breathed in. She breathed out. After several repetitions she felt her heart rate resume its normal pace. She choked down the bile rising in her throat.
Abigail Hobbs. Hannibal Lecter. Will Graham.
Abigail repeated the mantra to herself over and over again. She had locked it away inside her heart, when her mind had been emptied by Hannibal to make room for Mischa. In those days of intense darkness followed by blinding brightness, when her consciousness was dulled by the comforting lull of sedatives and hallucinogenics, Abigail had clung onto the last remnants of herself, hiding them so that eventually she could find her way back.
Back then she hadn't known what would become of her. She didn't know what Mischa's life would be like. Now, panicking in the rose garden, Abigail wished she had thrown what was left of her old life away when she had had the chance.
Still holding a rose, Abigail stood and peered at her reflection in the birdbath. The eyes, nose and mouth were still hers. She ran her fingers through her new blond hair and controlled the urge to slice it all off with her garden shears. It was a convincing dye job, she thought. Her freckles had multiplied with her new tanned visage. If she didn't push her hair back to reveal the cauterized flesh where her left ear had been, Mischa Lecter was the picture of health. Who would ever guess that this blond, tanned, smiling girl was connected to the bloody legacy of Abigail Hobbs?
Abigail grasped the rose stem in her hand, forcing the thorn into the flesh of her palm. She looked at the blood pooling on her skin, and remembered the blood gushing out of an eye socket and onto her arm. She had calmly rinsed it off in the basement sink last night, but now she could see the stain as though it were still fresh.
Out, damn spot! She had read those words long ago, in a past life - they stung her now, a cruel joke. She laughed at the absurd, grotesque parody her life had become. The first version of Abigail Hobbs had lived in a realm of fantasy - she had believed in the delusion that the wolves roaming the forest would never breach its borders. Now she had become a player in a Shakespearean tragedy, instead of the fairytale princess.
No, she realized, she was the princess - just not the one she wanted to be. She was Rapunzel, locked away in a tower; she was Sleeping Beauty, trapped inside of her own body. She felt the laughter bubbling up inside her begin to edge on hysterical, and it caught in her throat, turning into a sob. Abigail stopped herself before the tears could reach her eyes.
Last night. The heavy weight of the knife in her hand, Jonathan's pitiful screams as he choked on his own blood.
Nicholas Boyle had not felt like this. That had been an accident. Jonathan – and the ones before him – had been planted. Led to her for slaughter.
Here's the smell of blood still – all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
The charming, tanned face of Mischa looked up at her from the birdbath. The mask had been constructed so well, with exquisite craftsmanship. All of Mischa was a construction, a desperate fantasy of her creator's long dead baby sister. This fake Mischa had no depth, Abigail thought, she was as shallow as this birdbath.
In this way the mask was appealing. It was very easy to wear. Abigail was sure she could slip behind it and disappear for good, never again to be tormented by the blood caked beneath her fingernails. Mischa felt no remorse for the pain of others, she had not been created that way.
Abigail was tempted. Mischa could stay in this sun-soaked garden forever, enjoying her books and music and painting. Abigail had no family to return to, no home waiting for her. Mischa at least had one brother. One brother was enough.
Hannibal retreating into the darkness. His cool hand as it wrapped around her wrist. The pleased hum of approval as he removed the knife from Jonathan's eye, and kissed Mischa on the forehead.
She dropped the rose and thrust her hands into the birdbath, shattering the reflection. No, Abigail. That is not who you are. That is not who you wanted to become. That is why you cannot be Mischa.
I can't become a part of him.
Hannibal. The sound of the piano still drifted from the house out into the garden. She had been such a fool to turn a blind eye to his maneuvering and persuasion. She should have known when he suggested to hide the body of Nicholas Boyle. She should have known the night he seduced Alana and Will into his bed. It had all been right there in front of her. She knew the traits of a master manipulator, she had lived with one for eighteen years.
She was in training to become one herself.
No, she hadn't turned a blind eye. Abigail had recognized his tactics, and found them familiar – comforting. She was drawn to him, and had convinced herself it was his reassurance and charm that she connected to – he reminded her of the good qualities she still had.
In truth, she had found someone as ruthless as herself – and had been enthralled.
Beneath the shallow water of the birdbath, she watched as the blood dissolved off of her skin. She flexed her fingers, and the cuts still stung. These are your hands, Abigail told herself. From now on, they will only do as you command. They will never again be the tools of twisted men.
She waited for the sores on her palms to stop bleeding, and made sure that there was no trace of blood left on them. She continued to gather roses as she formulated her plan.
Everyone must think she was dead. That's why her ear was missing, surely Hannibal had planted it somewhere compromising. Beyond that, she had no idea what the narrative surrounding her disappearance must be. No one knew that the last one to see her “alive” was Hannibal – that meeting in her old house had ended with a needle full of sedatives up her arm.
It was Will Graham that she had been with right before her death. Will Graham. Abigail felt her stomach drop as her mantra haunted her. Hannibal Lecter killed me. I need to find Will Graham. What had happened to Will after she ran from him? Nothing good, she knew. She had to find out.
In their cottage they had no telephone, no television or computer. Hannibal did not buy the newspaper or any magazines. Mischa had never been interested enough to pick up a newspaper on her trips into town – it was a complete blind spot for her, one that was carefully crafted, Abigail was sure.
She would have to wait until Hannibal left again, and she would have to move carefully. All she had was the small cash allowance he left her, and her bicycle.
She could use the computer at the public library. Find out where Will was. How to contact him.
And then what? Go to the police? The FBI? She thought of Jack Crawford, who had always distrusted her. He had always known the truth about her, and now Will could confirm it. Hannibal could poison his ear. By the time she reached them, Hannibal would erase every piece of evidence that he had ever had contact with her. And who would believe the murderous cannibal's orphaned daughter, against the trusted (murderous cannibal) psychiatrist?
No, that world of men had abandoned her. Except Will Graham and Alana Bloom. Whether they knew it or not, they had been just as manipulated as she had. Especially Will, Hannibal's most prized puppet.
The memory of Will and Hannibal dancing in his living room resurfaced in her mind. We were so foolish, she thought. It had seemed so innocent, when Hannibal grasped Will’s hands and swept him across the floor. But it had all been so carefully plotted and crafted, every touch and look meant to draw Will under Hannibal’s spell. The unguarded and giddy smile that had graced Will’s face was burned into Abigail’s eyelids.
Maybe she shouldn't reach out to him. Let him continue on, undisturbed, not knowing what monster's bed he had been lured into. What crimes he had, unknowingly, been complicit in.
She remembered the look of triumph on Hannibal's face that night after the opera. He had been her entire world, her guide and mentor in learning to enjoy life again. Now, she wanted to destroy anything Hannibal had ever taken pleasure in. She fantasized of burning down this cottage - destroying his books and his garden and his darling little sister along with it.
Abigail pictured Will's face, flush with pleasure beneath Hannibal – then imagined it contorted with rage as he struck back against his puppeteer.
She wanted to see Hannibal's face, covered in blood, an expression of horror and fear frozen on it as his captors turned against him.
No, even if the proper authorities could take him down, it would never be enough. Not for Abigail. Not for Will. She didn't want to watch him burn.
She wanted to light the fire.
Abigail would keep Mischa around for a while longer. She still needed her.
Carefully, she put the mask back on.
Mischa gathered up her roses, and joined her brother at the piano.