The Fates Can't Help Me Now || Mischa Lecter & Abigail Hobbs
[[ Closed to amisguided-ghost - post!Vermont-verse. After Abigail is disposed of by Mason Verger, she runs into someone rather unexpected...]]
It had been a long train ride back to Baltimore. In many ways, the decision to return home--or whatever passed for home, these days--had been impulsive. It was instinctual, that urge to go back to where you had come from, and though she knew it was unwise, knew that she had best get as far away from Mason - from Hannibal, Will, the FBI - as possible, she had found herself at the ticket booth, handing over the money, clutching a one-way to Maryland.
He'd had his driver drop her several states away, for the same exact reason that it would've made sense for her to keep going south: Mason didn't want her recognized any more than she wanted to be recognized. There were limits, she was sure, to the powers of the Verger family's legal team. Finding a girl (a girl previously presumed to be dead) holed up in Mason's private residence, with a bouquet of bruises on her body and the hollowed-out pallor of someone who hasn't seen the outside world in a long time would probably have been beyond the reach of their expertise. Sex-crimes were one thing, particularly when the witnesses were too young to take the stand. But she was seventeen. She was high-profile. And she knew what had happened to her.
In some ways, she was surprised he hadn't killed her. But then, she'd made a habit of escaping death. It was some kind of cruel joke, on the part of the universe, or God--whoever was listening: put her through as many traumatic scenarios as possible, then rob her of the opportunity for release. There was no easy death. If she'd been less exhausted, she might have considered throwing herself onto the railroad tracks.
But instead she'd boarded the train. She'd slept most of the journey, a fitful sleep punctuated by nightmares, or more accurately rehashed memories for her recent misadventures, the feeling of Mason's skin on hers, the way his breath felt in the darkness.
She'd woken to the rail staff gently shaking her, asking her to please disembark, they were they. They'd arrived.
Abigail stared up at the glass and cement ceiling of Penn Station, arms wrapped around herself, fingers curled around the cuffs of her sweater sleeves. It was cold. Colder than she remembered, even though she'd only left Maryland 48 hours earlier. Easy to forget how chill the wind was, when you'd been holed up in a psychopath's bedroom for five months. The wind howled through the open entryway, cut her, chafed her skin, and all she could think, with a sick twist in her stomach, was that she missed him. She missed Mason.
It was the first time in months that she'd been truly alone.
