{ 𝕒 } fight or flight

[lurings]

WHO: abigail & jayden; abigail & derek; abigail & will; abigail & freddie; abigail & hime;
WHERE: various;
WHEN: various;
WHAT: flotilla of apologies & sleepovers & secrets. a whole bunch of things in one neat little package. actual real life being a teenage girl time. catch-all for closed things throughout the month because i'm a weirdo.
WARNINGS: underage drinking? abigail's entire traumatic life, probably. mentions of abigail's entire traumatic life. TEENAGE GIRLS.

-

{ ᴀʙɪɢᴀɪʟ & ᴊᴀʏᴅᴇɴ; ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 1sᴛ; ᴍɪᴅɴɪɢʜᴛ-ɪsʜ }

[ when jayden arrives, abigail is already waiting on the front steps, fluffy cat at her ankles sniffing the grass but seemingly too delicate to actually touch it. boys showing up at her house in the middle of the night is not a new thing, she's learned to bypass knocking and potentially waking up her roommates.

bundled in a thick sweater over her tank top and leggings, she is surprisingly sans scarf, but the sweater covers most of her scar and her neat side braid covers the rest. it also covers the conspicuous lack of ear. there's a reason it had been a surprise to jayden. she hides it very well.

she fidgets a little, shifting back and forth, but her arms are crossed so her usual nervous habit of tangling her fingers together isn't there to give her nerves away. ]

Hi.

{ ᴀʙɪɢᴀɪʟ & ᴅᴇʀᴇᴋ; ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 10ᴛʜ; ᴀғᴛᴇʀɴᴏᴏɴ }

[ abigail really needs to learn self-defense. not just because she has a tendency to get kidnapped and held hostage and, you know, murdered, but because her mode of self-defense is... also murder. not because she is a monster or enjoys it, but because she is excessively pragmatic and murder is guaranteed to work. murder has not failed her yet.

but if jayden hadn't let go when she said he was hurting her, she would have hurt him and that's scary. so learning self-defense is really for the best, for everyone.

derek is a good teacher and abigail truly wants to learn so she turns out to be a diligent and attentive student. and surprisingly tough for someone who is so small and unassuming. what, you think she gutted a grown man without having some muscle to put behind it. even still, derek could easily kick her ass so by the time he calls for a break, she's breathing heavy and has to push strands of hair escaping from her braid off her damp cheeks. ]

It's too hot for this.

[ huffing out a breath, she grabs a bottle of water off the back steps and sits down in the grass, fanning her bare throat. #midwesterner. she is delicate and does not like the heat. ]

{ ᴀʙɪɢᴀɪʟ & ᴡɪʟʟ; ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 10ᴛʜ; ᴇᴠᴇɴɪɴɢ }

[ hannibal is gone. abigail realized this when he didn't make a peep during her "hostage" situation. she has the self worth of a rotting, maggot riddled potato, but she knows he would have been there in a heartbeat.

to protect his investment, of course.

she's not sure how she feels about it, but she doesn't know how she feels about a lot of things. her life is a constant learning curve.

but she knows she cares about will and since hannibal isn't here, will deserves to know what he doesn't know. will deserves raspberries. not actual raspberries, unfortunately, abigail doesn't have any of those. she has a box of wheat thins in her lap as she sits cross-legged on her bed reading flannery o'connor for the fortieth time.

she doesn't bother to let will in because a. it's will, b. it's not the middle of the night, and c. she's not sneaking him in under chilton's nose. chilton knows will, there is not reason to secret him in the way she did with stiles.

her scarf, for the record, is still off limits and is currently wound around the post at the head of her bed, half stuck under her pillow. ]

{ ᴀʙɪɢᴀɪʟ & ғʀᴇᴅᴅɪᴇ; ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 16ᴛʜ; ʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴀғᴛᴇʀɴᴏᴏɴ }

[ abigail is wearing her scarf again as she sits sipping her rose lemonade from some hippie coffee shop that only serves fair trade organic everything, but it's looped loosely enough that part of her scar is showing. baby steps.

she's fiddling with the straw nervously as she waits because how boy? how... telling someone you weren't actually dead and the funeral she went to was for a girl who was still alive and just recovering from having her eat cut off?

there is not manual for revealing her horrible life, okay, and right now she isn't feeling very #blessed. in any facet of her life -- except that she has freddie and will. she feels good about that. probably why she's so nervous. because freddie thought she was dead... and abigail let her keep thinking that. for months.

oops? ]

{ ᴀʙɪɢᴀɪʟ & ʜɪᴍᴇ; ɴᴏᴠᴇᴍʙᴇʀ 18ᴛʜ; ʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴀғᴛᴇʀɴᴏᴏɴ }

[ AHH GIRL THINGS WHAT.

so hime is taking abigail shopping. "taking" in the sense that they're meeting each other at the mall after school/stealing a shift at the bait shop for monies. but since abigail hasn't gone shopping since before her mom was murdered right in front of her...

hime will definitely need to take the reins on this one.

anypoodle, abigail is waiting by the fountain near the front of the mall type shopping area AS SHE WILL DIRECT HIME because fountains are good landmarks and so she can chuck a penny in for good luck. she's gonna need it, son. ]

Comments

[immigrantpunk]

[And here's Jayden plodding up the walkway. He didn't realize he lived so close to Abigail all this time but he tends to forget the whole government housing set up. He's in track pants and a hooded sweatshirt, which could be pajamas. It's pretty late, after all. There's little he can do to hide the cloying scent of marijuana and his slightly bloodshot eyes, but. Hey. If she's going to judge him for that it's probably well within her right. Seems only fair. ]

Hey.

[He spots the cat and crouches down, smiling.] Котёнок! Hey there. Is she friendly?

[He looks up at Abigail, posing the question before trying to reach out his hand.]

[lurings]

[ before she can answer, ziggy marches forward and meows plaintively like please sir, may i have another, like she is some sort of pet deprived creature and abigail doesn't spoil her with affection. ]

She's... [ a giant slut basically. ] Very.

[ she says nothing about the smell, blinking so her eyes don't water. who is she to judge, drinking wine that came out of a box. with a straw. besides that she spent a good month debating the merits of it for her nightmares and decided she was too much of a wuss to figure out how to buy it and just suffered instead. ]

[immigrantpunk]

[Jayden's eyes light up a bit when the cat comes right over. He makes the universal kissy noise for "come hither, feline" and scratches under her chin. He's mildly allergic to cats, so it's only a matter of time before his own eyes get itchy and he starts to sneeze, but cats are worth it. He's a big fan.

He pets her for several seconds, talking to her softly in Russian because hey, animals don't care what language you speak, they tend to understand you regardless. Without looking up, he switches back to English, asking Abigail:]

So you're a David Bowie fan?

[lurings]

[ her head tips to the side in curiosity as he talks to her cat in russian instead of english, a tiny, nervous smile fluttering across her lips. ]

My mom was. [ abigail does like space oddity tho, but it was more something her mom passed on to her with the wizard of oz when she stayed home sick, playing the collected works of bowie while she made dinner or dusted. ] She used to play it when I was small.

[immigrantpunk]

[The cat is now somehow in Jayden's arms, oh the allergy attack is coming, but he hugs her like a baby and feels the little motor in her throat vibrate into his hands as she purrs. There is almost nothing better than a content cat. He's never owned one, alas, due to lack of space, his sinuses, and a disagreeable mother. He and Ziggy could be good friends, though, that much is apparent.

He hesitates on her use of was. Will Graham's graphic description flashes before his eyes: Abigail's mom, throat slit, falling on the front porch. Abigail inside, held at knife point by her own father. Jayden wishes Will hadn't told him. He feels like now he knows Abigail's secrets against her will. He clears his throat, focusing on the cat.]

My dad, he uh, was really into classical music for some reason. Russian composers, obviously, just to be stereotypical. He'd play these tapes and CDs of like, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in his garage when he worked on cars. He said it helped him concentrate.

[It's not the same. Of course it's not the same. Jayden's father wasn't murdered, nobody ended his life on purpose, no one in his family was malicious enough to betray everything they were supposed to be. But he knows the weight of referring to a parent in the past tense, and he wants to show her that, in some small way, she's not alone.]

[infomodder]

[That had been the big tip off for Will, too. Hannibal had missed an appointment earlier that day, but he could not fathom any world in which Hannibal Lecter was present and not in a coma would be one where he would not come running for Abigail Hobbs. Sure, he'd come when Will called, if Will called in certain ways, but with the combination of Abigail Hobbs in danger and Will Graham desperately trying to get a hold of Hannibal because of that?

Only one thing made sense: Hannibal wasn't among them. His little venture through the housing area in Heropa that night confirmed it. He hoped it wasn't like when Chilton and Gideon left, that he would return, and not because he'd already told everyone else Hannibal Lecter had left.

He's friendly and grateful enough to whoever does the answer the door, has no reason to climb up to her window or anything else ridiculous. There is a certified psychiatrist in the house who can vouch that Will visiting Abigail in private isn't doesn't stem from twisted lewdness—at least, not the sort of lewdness some bozos might jump to first. It also helps that Will a. doesn't care if people wrongly come to that assumption when it says more about them than it does about anything else and b. has already been accused of killing and cannibalizing at least part of her after he'd thrown up in her ear.

The knock at her door is quiet and followed by him slowly opening it, all jeans that are nearing the point of needing to be tossed and a plaid shirt hidden underneath a jacket that is definitely more helpful in Virginia than it is in Florida. His hair definitely spent all day under a hat, and he definitely did nothing more than finger comb it after.]

Didn't know Wheat Thins came in raspberry. [He says, keeps his eyes trained on her, on the scarf, on Ziggy, on everything that is not the pictures she has of the two of them. The two of them or any with Hannibal. They're all gut shots.] You know, Flannery O'Connor? She liked peacocks a lot.

[The focus shifts to that book as he sits on the edge of the bed, eyebrows lifted like he spent time reading her works himself. Like he's not stating what might be obvious to anyone who's read her stories. Like he doesn't know that fact because someone indirectly told him.

He's so educated on Flannery O'Connor. Truly.]

[lurings]

[ she finishes her sentence before she looks up even though by now she knows the entire anthology by heart. but once she gets to the period she glances up, fond smile lifting her lips. ]

She had an ostentation on her farm. [ in case he was wondering. she's not even sure how she knows that -- alana told her, presumably, but it's fuzzy. she remembers bits and pieces from her coma and things are indistinct from when hannibal drugged her tea, so some of her interactions with alana aren't ones she really remembers with clarity.

ziggy abandons abigail on the bed, leaping gracefully to the floor to pad over to will and rub her face against his pants. mine now. ]

[infomodder]

[Will's pants definitely smell like fish and insects and Gunther, and he wonders if Ziggy zooms in on them because of one of those smells. He leans down, spares her a hand over her head with a quiet hey, you before he does he sits. Perches, more like, though with a lap that's clearly open for Ziggy to further stake claim. He doesn't have to be a cat person to know how to treat them or show them the same sort of compassion he'd show his dogs.]

That's all peacocks could be, a show. They look pretty. They're actually very stupid birds. [A quiet, short laugh, a twitch of his lips that hides a smile if she watches.] How's the sleeping been going?

[He didn't bring any bananas. But, Goddamnit, if she ever showed an interest in that particular "remedy," the house would be overflowing with them.]

[lurings]

[ ziggy is in it to win it like mm pet me because she's a giant slut, putting her paws on his knees before jumping into his lap to curl up. will can never move again.

after smiling briefly as his insult to peafowl, abigail's lips purse when he brings up her sleeping. stiles had come over after the weird nightmare/dream debacle, but she's been trying to not put him in that situation because he has a girlfriend and it's apparently cheating and that's fine, that's just great. abigail is used to her life sucking, she shouldn't have let her guard down. she looks back down at the book again instead of looking at him, though she doesn't give the words much attention. ]

Badly.

[infomodder]

[Not a cat person at all, though, perhaps, that's why Ziggy chooses to insert herself all up in his personal space. He's not the one who'll beg for her attention or bother the shit out of her if she's ignoring him, it's more fun to do with this people who truly do not care for cats. Let the ones who think cats are the epitome of companion suffer not being given attention, make the ones who couldn't care less about them suffer by having to deal with them. Little shits. But Will's suffering doesn't seem to translate; he welcomes the cat like he'd welcome a dog or one of April's raccoons, leans back to make more space and runs his hands over her with minimal prompting.

He's grateful for her presence, in all honesty. She gives him a tangible reason to not stare at Abigail or look around the room distractedly, find something to focus other than Abigail. That distraction has been adequately provided, and it wasn't actually his design.]

If you think it'd help for me to stay over again, I don't mind.

[Said to the cat's tail as he winds it around his fingers, but sincerely meant. Even if that means he ends up going to work the next day in the same clothes with cat hair instead of dog hair, there is nothing in any world that he would not do to help Abigail if he could, if she'd only say it.]

[redhairring]

[ Let's be real, Freddie probably goes to this hippie coffee shop that serves fair trade organic everything on a regular basis. So, she arrives, a few minutes late because this is Freddie, and she has just had the world's worst lunch with Yuri Petrov.

Just girl time with her and Abigail. Probably talking about boys, Freddie being helpful and offering good advice that doesn't have to deal with her bad choices, people judging Freddie, things that end up with Freddie wanting a drink, this would just be a nice, easy conversation.

(Yeah, she's gonna look back on all that and probably think 'what the hell was I even thinking.') Freddie slides into a seat across from Abigail, giving her a small smile in the process. ]

Sorry I'm late--hope I didn't keep you waiting too long.

[lurings]

It's fine. [ she shrugs dismissively, cradling her lemonade between her hands. she... hadn't noticed, probably too busy texting tbh. since she has friends now. and one of them is a girl finally. sure a junior high school age girl, but whatever. ITS A GIRL and considering her other friends are jayden and stiles and maybe she's not actually sure derek... hime is a unicorn.

but freddie is still abigail's number one when it comes to the womenfolk. ]

I just sat down, so. [ no big. ]

[redhairring]

[ Freddie is proud of you, Abigail. Make those friends. Have that normal life. ]

So, what did you want to talk about?

[lurings]

Jayden. [ a beat, she glances down at her lemonade. interesting lemonade. ] Also home. And if you don't want to talk about home, it's probably really really important that we do anyway, but you can decide.

[ what they talk about, what order, etc, etc. it's about as much of an anxious babble as abigail is capable off, which is telling enough that its A Big Deal. ]

[redhairring]

[ paaaause ] Well, let's get the conversation that's going to suck the most over with first. [ aka home. Freddie doesn't want to talk about home but if it's this Big A Deal, then talking about home it is. ]

What do you want to talk about with regards to home?

[altercate]

It's too hot for everything in Florida. [ derek tells her. there will never be a day when he doesn't take his chance to remind the world that florida is terrible. ] We can be done for the day. That was a lot already.

[ derek isn't--he knows he's better at this now than he was when he'd tried to teach scott, to teach erica and boyd and isaac. all the grief-rough edges have softened, and there's no urgency in this. with ken and with abigail now, he's managing. it's a good feeling, knowing he's at least taught them something, if not anything. he moves to sit in the grass beside her, rolling his neck on his shoulders until the bones crack. ]

[lurings]

[ she glances over like sir pls. ]

You're from California, isn't it hot there all the time?

[ she generalizes it to california instead of beacon hills because she's still 90% of the time going to call it bacon hills and that is just plain dumb. ]

[altercate]

Northern California isn't.

[ derek's just stopped bothering to identify the town. most people haven't recognized the name and derek's tired of trying to explain it. ]

Who told you I was from California?

[ clearly stiles, derek's pretty sure, but. ]

[lurings]

Scott.

[ it's quiet because she knows he didn't come back with stiles and she stretches her arms over her head, fingers wiggling at the clouds, so she doesn't have to look at him while she's talking about his missing friend. ]

Well, Scott said he was from B- [ bacon hills. DON'T SAY IT. ] Beacon Hills and Stiles said he lived with people from home, it wasn't hard to connect the dots once I figured out you lived with Stiles.

[ she looks over, pulls one hand down to circle her face with her index finger before she lifts her arm back up to continue stretching, tipping her head back toward the sun. ] Not just a pretty face.

[altercate]

[ scott. derek's quiet for a moment, watching her, trying not to think of the way stiles face had fallen when he'd realized scott wasn't coming out of the compound at all. but abigail doesn't really need to be inflicted to that train of thought, so derek plucks at a few blades of grass, shrugs a shoulder. ]

I know you're not. [ a little placating, but sincere. he'd never thought she was stupid. ] I just didn't think you knew.

[ or more to the point, that derek hadn't really been included in whatever generalizations had been made. ]

[friendshiprocks]

[ AW YEAH, GIRL THINGS.

this is like, hime's second time at the heropa mall (or whatever it's called) but she is just so stoked and so happy and knows where all the good shops are already, let's be real, she spent like five hours in the mall when she first got here. Pikarigaoka is a cute little small town with an emphasis on small. Heropa has shopping centers.

so, still wearing her school uniform, Hime pretty much just charges up to the fountain, too hype about the idea of shopping and buying some clothes with what little money she has to realize that wait a moment, she's meeting Abigail in person for the first time, she should be a little nervous because Hime's always a little nervous when it comes to new friends.

as she spots Abigail, Hime gives her a big wave. ] Abigail! Hey there!

[lurings]

[ yep, just as tiny and adorable as she is on screen, wow. how is that even possible? it's not that abigail is unaware of what carefree cheer looks like, she just isn't often in the presence of it.

like ever.

oh her tragic life. ]

Hey Hime. [ she manages a smile in return, hand lifting in a much smaller smile. her hair looks way more magical in real life. /snapchats it to freddie. ]

[friendshiprocks]

[ a tragic life that Hime is blissfully unaware of, still caught in the throes of new friend!!! new older friend!!! new super cool shopping buddy friend!!! ]

I tried to get here as fast as I could when school ended. [ and might have cheated a little by using her magical girl powers to help fly the distance, WHOOPS. ] Ready to shop?

[lurings]

[ THAT IS AN ABUSE OF YOUR MAGICAL GIRL POWERS, HIME. ITS ABOUT THE ETHICS OF GAMING JOURNALISM GOD.

jk abigail looks mildly impressed with hime's commitment to shopping and her head bobs in a nod. one hour of shopping and then school, she can do this. ]

Sure. Lead the way, boss.

[friendshiprocks]

[ WHAT'S THE USE OF HAVING SUPERPOWERS IF YOU CAN'T USE THEM, OKAY?

and hime practically grabs onto abigail's arm as she starts to drag her to whatever the heropa equivalent of rue21 is. ] I saw a really cute store that sells some adorable shirts when I was in here last—we'll find something awesome for you!