infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

No, it's okay. It can be just us. I'd like that.

[ she feels trapped in the answer. if she said "yes please, i'd like to invite hannibal" it would bother will. not inviting hannibal will bother hannibal. both of which she is loathe to do. being alive before depended on will being attached to her. if she alienated him he wouldn't want her anymore, she would be superfluous. her brain is still hardwired to acquiesce in order to make other people happy. ]

Maybe we could all have dinner together before we go. Hannibal can meet the cat.

[One day, perhaps, he can make it apparent that there's nothing she could do to truly alienate him, not while she still draws breath, has a beating heart. That there's little she can do to make Will happy, that it's not her job to make Will happy. She must already know sometimes people find happiness in all the wrong things (luring, ripping)—and yet, with those unhappily happy few, striving to please ends up working in the favor of not facing the chopping block.

Happiness isn't something granted those who come from their world, is it.]

Maybe. [He's not going to protest that.] I'll talk to him about it, see what he has to say.

[He didn't want Abigail facing a dead body. Like hell he wants her facing Hannibal Lecter more than she has to.]

[ life is so hard. ]

Okay. What should I name the cat?

[this life only suffering]

Whatever you want. I've been calling her It and Cat and Hey You and Don't and Smokey the Bandit when she got into the dog food. I'm sure an actual name is a step up from that.

[Shadowleaf the Conqueror??? 50 Shades of Why Are You Here Gray Cat Go Away???]

Ziggy Stardust? I probably need to see her first.

That fits. She is very good at killing spiders, but I don't think any of them are from Mars.

Probably are in this place.

Fair point. I don't want to run into them.

[Even if they're an imPort. Last time he ran into a dog imPort that didn't talk, it turned out

well

not so great.]

Does it get easier? All the crazy stuff?

[NOT THE C-WORD]

Sometimes. My house up here got destroyed a while back, and I witnessed a dog flipping a cop car. I had a roommate who could just sort of vanish. I talked to a giant robot about dogs. I know someone who has wings. Lucifer went to jail here. I met someone named Flame Princess, a girl on fire from a kingdom of fire people. Every time something happens that I think is strange or impossible, I recall all that, and that I've already seen plenty of strange, impossible things. So that helps.

Wings?

[ that sure is what she's is focusing on in that sea of ... everything. ]

Wings. That she can actually fly with sort of wings. Haven't seen them in totally proper action, but it was still pretty strange.

[And he made bird comments he won't repeat to the daughter of the Shrike, n o p e.]

She and I get on well enough, but wings aren't anything I'm used to. So she's one of the ones that I remember whenever I encounter something that I immediately think is impossible.

Like a bird.

[ haha too bad. she went there anyway. ]

[CHILD]

Kind of like a swan, yes.

[Giving some sweet sweet oral over the dinner table at Casa Lecter.]

[ SHE WAS ALWAYS THE ONE SITTING ACROSS FROM IT THAT IS LITERALLY THE FIRST THING SHE THINKS OF AND HAS TO GO GAG A LITTLE IT WAS A BAD LIFE CHOICE TO ACTUALLY GO TO HER ASSIGNED JOB TEXTING WHILE WATCHING ARTISANAL SAUSAGE BEING MADE IS NOT OKAY. this is what she gets for having bad work ethic and not being able to claim sick leave anymore since she already got her stitches out and doesn't even need to have a bandage over her scar anymore. /tina belcher's distressed whale noises. ]

That sounds pretty.

[ a+ save. ]

[HE WAS TEACHING HER TO APPRECIATE ART OF ALL KINDS AT ANY TIME EVERYONE SHOULD BE ABLE TO EAT HUMAN FLESH NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON IT'S ETIQUETTE OKAY really fucked up etiquette. Will knows it's there. And in a few other places, why does one person need that many copies of Leda and the Swan???]

Pretty's a good word. [A+ getting away from "the wings are pretty" or "she's pretty" and not having to go down that road, thanks.] We get together and drink sometimes. I always get a little drunker, it takes a while for her. [Because she's like immortal or something, and Will is not. He can own up to being a lightweight in that regard.] Would you wanna meet her?

To drink or in general because I think you know I'm still to young to legally drink and it might be frowned upon to get your de facto ward accidentally drunk.

[ not that she'd say no to half a glass of wine before bed so she only wakes up panicking and not screaming... but she's only teasing. ]

Yes to either, ftr. Does Gunther like sausage?

Wouldn't be frowned on if it was done in the house with supervision. I meant in general. But if you want to drink, that can be done, too.

[Lecter's all giving her orange juice, what's up with that.]

All right, I'll let her know. Gunther probably does. He's never had it. Why, you got some sausage?

I am an Artisanal Sausage Chef Assistant. :| I finally went to my job after my doctor's note ran out. I hate it. The sausage is free. I'm probably going to quit though and become a homeless street urchin like Oliver Twist.

[No? No. Nope. Nu uh. Not okay.]

If you hate it, why haven't you quit? You won't be homeless. We'll find you another job if you want one.

I don't actually want to leave this job until I have another one for sure.

If you can run a cash register, you can always pick up shifts at the shop.

[He offered it to Annie, who felt uncomfortable by a gift of shirts. Shirts he had no intentions of telling her about the specifics of expenses until someone went and took them from her. She wanted to do something to pay him back, something that made what he gave feel earned, and it was all he could think of. A trade that he didn't need, but a compromise that was necessary.

With Abigail, it's not at all about trades or making her feel like she has to work, to earn something, not from Will. It's recognizing that there may now be a great discomfort with meat in general, though to what degree...he's yet unaware. Coupled with her hating it, it's the best he can come up with.]

[ this time the long pause is on her end. she would not mind working for will. spending all day in his shop, staring at stupid fishing puns and liking pictures of herself on stiles' instagram. she's not a people person, but that kind of job only needs her to be able to pretend.

the pause comes from latent apprehension and bitter curiosity. usually she is better at not asking because for the most part she doesn't want to know the answers to her questions. but this one she can't not ask. it doesn't help that she's been surrounded by kitchen materials she is incredibly familiar with all day for the past three days and it's sucking all the joy from her life. complimentary bagels now come with purchase of sausage. that's all that keep her boss from tsking at her texting.

her bagels are great.

she types the simple question and lets it sit, going back and changing the wording, changing it back, changing it again. the little ellipses bubble must stay up for so long it looks like she's writing a dostoyevsky novel text instead of: ]

How much of you wanting to look out for me is because you killed my dad and how much of it is because I'm me?

[ that took almost an hour (including, in her defense, time to clock out and leave) to compose. ]

[He doesn't think too much of the message taking a while. Things happen, this conversation isn't important except for the fact of the matter that it's one he's having with Abigail. This is nothing, currently, that he finds a long pause to be worrisome. Then he gets the message and.

Ah.]

All of it's because of you being you.

[Just like he told Jesse Pinkman, none of the scrutiny was about him. It was about her. If he hadn't engaged, Will would have carried on as he'd been before, wouldn't have added him to the list of people to follow, to track, to sniff.

There's a ghost that follows him, a father with the last name of Hobbs. But that ghost doesn't follow him to Abigail. That ghost that appears in dreams, that he can see (could see) when he was sick, clapping at serenades and resting in a shallow grave? Stays away from her. There's darkness that plagues Abigail enough as is, Will does not need to add manifestations of her father hanging over her every time he sees her.

He gets enough of that in his own head. Mulling over remarks, the way she looks at him, the way they interact. A constant presence he's aware of does not to be put forth in any other way. Even with a brain rather on fire, there was a drive to keep them separate. She is the Shrike's daughter, may forever be remembered as such, but Will can't stand her to be just that. He lived in a father's shadow once, broke out—nothing as damning as cannibalism and preying on young women, of course not—and yet how can he help her do anything like it, be more than her father's offspring, when it's what ties them together? When, back where they hail from, it was a way for her to gain independence, money, a way out that Freddie Lounds was more than glad to help with? If it hadn't been for her father, Will and Abigail would have never met. The ties that bind are a bloody mess and trying to untangle anything ends up making it worse.]

It's you, Abigail. Nothing and no one else.

[Those three sentences?

Took Will all of a minute, shot off together. He doesn't have to think about it. He doesn't have to get into anything else, though he could. It's pointless when, in the end of things, it boils down to everything being for her, for her as a person, not her as an extension of that guy he shot to death in his own damn kitchen. Unbeknownst to him, a few from Baltimore have already thought of Will as something like Lecter's dog, ready to bark, to bite, to froth, to defend. He's been called that much when it came to his job back home. But really, if there's any one person that he'd go foaming at the mouth and tear out of a leash for without any suggestion needing to be planted?

He's talking to her right now.]

[ even though her brain immediately protests that of course he would say that, why would he say anything else???, the rest of her feels validated that, finally, to someone, she is just abigail.

important because of who she is not who she was born to or how she can be useful or whose secrets she can spill. ]

Thanks. I'm out of work. I'm going to shower and change and then I can pick up Ziggy. If that's okay.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject