The first time that Abigail sees the woman standing at the end of her bed, she doesn't think much of it.
She is, to be completely honest, rather accustomed to unfamiliar women showing up in her room at the hospital. Between nurses, cleaning staff, and occasionally Freddi Lounds (who seems to be the only reporter capable of worming their way in past security). Abigail keeps her existence in the hospital survivable only approaching everything and everyone in it with a firm attitude of disinterest. She does not want to be there. There is no need to pretend that she does.
Abigail looks up from her book.
The woman is pretty, in a graceful European sort of way. Her face is solemn. Abigail thinks that she must be another psychiatrist or doctor that Jack Crawford has sent over, and yet there is something about her eyes, deep, weary, that sets her on edge.
Slowly, the girl lowers the book halfway to her lap. "What is it?" she asks.
The woman makes a peculiar face, although trying to smile. There's a strain, a discomfort, as though it has been a long time since she last made any pleasant expression. She tucks a long wisp of dark blonde hair behind her ear. "Just checking in." The words are heavily accented. Not an accent that is very easy to place.
Abigail raises her eyebrows and nods. "I see." She makes her skepticism - and scorn - obvious, raising her book again so that she can just barely see the woman over the top of the cover. "Well. I'm fine."
Returning to her book, Abigail does not notice the woman leave the room.
The second time she sees the woman is in the wee hours of the night, and, shaking and panting and in a cold sweat, it is simple to attribute the dark gold head backlit by moonlight to be only another part of the nightmares that torment her.
Besides, Abigail is still half in the dream realm.
No one is to tell her the difference.
The third time, Abigail is sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the window. She does not hear the woman come in, but she feels her presence.
"Do you ever feel," the girl begins, quietly, "like you're always going to be an outlier? Not going to fit in, never going to convince people that you're normal?"
She can feel the mattress move a little as the woman sits down beside her. Her dress is the same as before - lovely, simple, a dusk-grey satin with off-white trim. It looks out of place, against the white of the hospital room.
"Certainly." Abigail can sense the woman watching her. There's nothing hostile about the feeling, though. The low accented voice continues. "Many times. Is that how you feel?"
The girl nods.
The woman raises her hand as though about to place her hand on Abigail's shoulder, but then pauses, and lowers it again as though having changed her mind. "Maybe it is the duty of the so-called 'outliers' to provide companionship to one another."
Abigail is beginning to think that this woman might actually be another patient at the hospital. She's a little too weird to be working for Jack, and something seems off about her.
Despite that, surprisingly, she doesn't mind the presence.
"Maybe," Abigail replies, meaning for it to sound skeptical, but not quite achieving it.
She gets lost in her reflection and when she comes back to the present, she is, once again, alone.
The woman does not visit Abigail on any sort of recognizable schedule over the next week or so, but, when she does show up, the girl is grateful for the company.
No nosy questions. No judgmental stares, no poking and prying. Just calm, comfortable quiet, occasionally interspersed by trivial conversation about the weather or the bland interior of the room. She is relieved to finally have someone with whom she can interact in such a way that doesn't keep shifting back to comments about her father over and over and over.
And when the woman isn't there, Abigail, admittedly, kind of misses her.
It is a wet Thursday - although the day of the week is irrelevant, every day in the hospital being the same, and she can only tell the outdoor weather because of the moisture clouding her window - when a nurse comes into the room while Abigail is speaking with the woman.
The door opens when Abigail is mid-sentence.
The nurse hesitates in the doorway, looking at the girl oddly.
"You're interrupting, didn't you think to knock first?" Abigail said, irritated.
The nurse frowned. Her eyebrows furrowed in obvious concern, "Interrupting what?"
"Int-" Abigail stops as she is slammed with a realization.
She stares hard at the woman.
The woman stares hard back.
Abigail drags her eyes back to the nurse. "N..nevermind," She said, quietly, "I didn't get enough, sleep, I.. nevermind. Sorry."
With a tight-lipped smile and a quick nod, the nurse comes over, deposits a tray of food on the bedside table. She has dealt with the craziest of crazies, so a sleep-deprived teenager is not really a concern.
When she leaves, she shuts the door behind her.
The second that the door is shut Abigail leans foreword and grabs the woman's bony wrist. This is the first physical contact they have had. The skin feels dry, her wrist frail.
"Who," Abigail whispers, voice that holds a myriad of emotions, anger, panic, confusion, "are you, and why didn't that nurse see you.
The woman takes a deep breath. She rests her long, graceful hand over the fingers around her wrist.
"My name is Mischa Lecter," she replies softly.
"I.. have come to see that you are doing well. My existence ended many years ago, and you are important to someone who is important to me. Which makes your wellbeing something that matters."
So she was dead. Fantastic.
Abigail was not an idiot, and the last name didn't go without notice. "Dr. Lecter."
The woman - Mischa, she corrects herself - nods. "He is my brother."
For some reason, this connection does not come to her as a relief at all. For the time being, although she is surprised that Mischa is dead, and although she is surprised that she's the sister of Hannibal Lecter (even though that did explain the European grace and the weird accent), neither of those were what really matters.
"So what you're saying is, basically," Abigail begins slowly, her eyes narrowing, "that Dr. Lecter is the only reason you came here to visit me?"
"Initially, yes." Mischa senses the difference and tenses, hunching up narrow shoulders. "That was what my plan had been. But over time, I-"
"You nothing, Mischa. Here I was, thinking that you were coming because of me, because you cared about me. Well clearly I was wrong, huh."
There is a pain in Mischa's dark eyes that is too resounding, too genuine, to be put into mere words. She opens her mouth as though about to respond, then closes it again.
A static flicker, and the dead woman is gone.
And Abigail Hobbs cries as she hasn't since the death of her parents.
Weeks pass.
Abigail dreams of Mischa Lecter, but even she knows that the dead woman was an actual figment of her imagination this time. There's a difference.
A very big difference.
And when one night she wakes to see someone standing at the foot of her bed, she is happier and more relieved than probably anyone else who might've woken up in a similar situation.
Crying into the satin of her shoulder, Abigail drags Mischa down onto the bed, pulling her into an embrace so tight that she probably could've suffocated the woman if she wasn't already dead.
"Don't go," Abigail whispers against her neck, hands clenched in the fabric. "Don't leave me again, please, I'm sorry, I just.." she makes a small choking sound. She'd come so close to losing the woman forever.
"You do not need to apologize," Mischa murmurs, bony fingers stroking the girl's dark hair. "You were hurt. I should have told you sooner."
Abigail does something between a sob and a laugh. "No, no. You would have scared me if you did that."
Slowly, hesitantly, the corner of Mischa's mouth twitches up into a very small smile. "You are most likely right."
Alone together in the hospital room, the dead woman and the living girl hold each each other, neither one having any desire to let go.
END
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