Full Summary: A collection of short stories on the lives of the Murder Family. Follows cannon up to the end of Trou Normand, then goes AU. Features established Hannigram and a surviving Abigail Hobbs as well as the occasional smattering of the rest of the BAU team.
Fun fact- a group of crows is called a murder. Hence the name.
Author's Note: Story rating is M for the following: language, sexual content (M/M) and the general violence that comes with Hannibal. This will update frequently like Green Finch and Linnet Bird does but it will not be on a scheduled day.
I don't profit by writing these characters but I'd love it if you'd review!
Hannibal opened his eyes slowly.
Along the faint edges of his awareness, he had detected the sound of pots being taken from their cabinets in his kitchen. That, in and of itself, was cause for investigation because, between himself and his cohabitants, he was in the kitchen far more often than the others. Even when one of them did enter the kitchen, they were rarely there without him.
On occasion, Will would attempt to sneak out of their room before Hannibal woke and try to make breakfast. The plan amused Hannibal to no end due to it's copious amounts of flaws. For one, the two slept in constant contact with one another; whatever limbs that were not overlapping ended up tangled in the white sheets. Not only that, but Will was not a very quiet person when it came to leaving the room, so the element of surprise was always lost. Sometimes, Hannibal would humor him and let him cook breakfast, but on most of those instances he'd hear the din coming from the kitchen, worry Will was causing either himself or the kitchen harm, and hurry downstairs to take over the operation. He was beginning to think that Will had actually managed to sneak past him this morning. He was beginning to, anyway, but then he recalled the weight on his torso.
Will's head was resting there, just beneath his breastbone, with an arm around Hannibal's belly, holding the doctor's midsection almost possessively.
As he came to be more aware, Hannibal picked up the sound of singing coming from downstairs, which confirmed his second guess. Abigail must be in the kitchen.
When Abigail had come under his official care about eighteen months ago, Hannibal had gone to a lot of effort in assuring she felt comfortable in her new environment...which had a lot to do with Alana's instance, really. He'd let her paint the guest room to her taste and she had a say in meal options for the week. It had taken a while for her to stop calling him Doctor Lecter and refer to him instead by his first name. That change brought them much closer, and Hannibal noted, as the weeks went by, that she was gradually adjusting to her home life with him...and then things were thrown into flux again when Will moved in nearly five months after Abigail had. She became distant, moody, sometimes even borderline irrational. Fearing the worst, Will had finally broken down and spoken to her.
'"Am I driving you away?"he asked in a broken voice,sitting on the corner of Abigail's bed.
Abigail raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to drive me away?"
"No," Will answered immediately, reaching out to touch Abigail's shoulder. He recoiled at the last moment, choosing instead to cover her hand with his own. "No. But do you think I am, Abigail?"
Abigail winced at the inquiry, and she didn't fully answer it. "I want to fix it."
"Fix what?"Will asked, tilting his head a bit in confusion.
"Nothing. Everything. I don't know."
Will sighed; despite the vagueness in her words, he was beginning to sense just what was bothering her so much, and he told her so. "This is about your dad, isn't it?"
"I don't need him," Abigail answered a little too quickly. "Doctor Lec- Hannibal,and you, you two are my legal guardians. I don't need my dad. I don't." She repeated that phrase several times, as if not only to convince Will of her honesty but to convince herself of it as well.
"Maybe you don't need him," Will began, not at all convinced of that despite Abigail's adamant words. "But that doesn't mean you can't want him."
Abigail gave a shaking, shuddering sigh, knowing that once again, her insightful new guardian had proved himself to be one of the most empathetic men she knew. Bested, she confessed, "Yeah, I do. But...I feel like somehow his presence is tainting this," she pointed at herself, then at Will, and then back at herself. "Whatever it is we are."
"Is that because you're still hurting? Or because I'm the one who took his life?"
Abigail jerked a nod and Will took that to mean both were the case.
"It's just that...Loss is something I know. I've lost my mom's parents, and then her, I've had pets.." she sniffled, lowering her watering eyes, speaking in between shaky gasps she emitted in attempt to keep from crying. "But with Dad, he...he left a void and...and you caused it. And now you are trying to fill it again and...and I just...I want to fix what's wrong with us but I don't know what...what it is."
"Do you blame me?" Will asked, his voice low and ridden with agony.
"I don't know, Will."
"You don't?"
Abigail whisked away her tears, trying to forget the hurt in his voice. "You saved my life. You...you took Dad's to do it but...you saved my life, Will. I...I know I'm not being fair..."
"But you are being honest," Will soothed, smoothing Abigail's hair.
"That's all I asked for."
Letting Will try and cook was one thing. Abigail was another. He very much doubted she'd woken up at six-thirty in the morning and made food just because she wanted to; she would normally ask Hannibal to do it for her, or if he wasn't readily available, she'd make toast. More than a little suspicious of her intent, as well as wary as to the current state of his kitchen, Hannibal decided to investigate the matter. The first order of that business, though, was getting out of bed, and that meant moving Will. Hannibal wriggled his body to the side of the bed, hoping to shake his lover off of him gently, but the younger man's hold on him made it so Hannibal ended up dragging Will with him. Slowly, Hannibal rolled his arm out and up. Taking him by the wrist, he guided Will's arm off his torso, to which Will groaned in protest.
"Go back to sleep," Hannibal whispered, tucking a pillow where his upper body had just been before rising to his feet. Pulling his navy robe over his shoulders, Hannibal tugged the girdle into a knot and made his way downstairs.
Abigail Hobbs had picked up a bit of the culinary talent she had grown to be used to over the months. Of course, she didn't know any recipes by heart like Hannibal did, but she had learned tips and tricks into making simple foods she'd enjoyed before moving in with him. She had two frying pans on the stove-top; one of them contained an egg yolk, the other, pieces of cut up sausage. Abigail flipped the eggs over several times and was just about to fold the meat in to them when a voice from the doorway hit her back.
"Good morning, Abigail."
Startled, Abigail nearly dropped the spatula she carried as she jumped in surprise. "Morning," she greeted before attempting to return to her cooking.
"You know," Hannibal told her, striding up to her side, "there's a better way of doing it than that."
Snatching the spatula from her hand, Hannibal used the edge of it to chop the sausage into the smallest pieces he could manage. It rather startled Abigail how fast he turned mouthful-sized morsels of meat into tiny bits of chopped sausage. The renowned psychiatrist then scooped the small pile of meat, placed in the center of the egg, and folded the cooked yolk over it. Abigail watched him work, noting the concentration in his eyes. She still recalled a comment Will had made about the look...unfortunately. Abigail had spent a long time trying to erase that from her memory.
"So," Hannibal began once the two of them were seated opposite each other, Abigail with a fresh plate of the dish she'd been making, this one made by Hannibal, "is there any particular reason you felt compelled to wake so early in the morning to make eggs?"
"No," Abigail responded. Her reply was much too quick, and they both knew it.
Hannibal sighed, "You've never been the best liar," he informed her curtly, "What is it on your mind, Abigail?"
Defeated, Abigail dropped her fork and huffed. "There...there's something I want to talk to you about, actually."
"I assimilated as much," Hannibal remarked dryly, taking a sip of his drink.
"Hannibal!" laughed Abigail, sprinkling a bit of pepper on her meal, "I'm being serious!"
He set down his glass and looked at her intently. Abigail knew he did, but she didn't return the gesture...she couldn't. But she did need to say what was on her mind, difficult as it was. It'd been on the back-burner of her conscious now for several weeks; the topic had also been the subject of an entire ninety-minute session with Alana Bloom. Abigail had prepared an entire speech for what she was going to say, but with Will not present as she'd hoped and Hannibal asking her directly what on her mind, Abigail finally blurted,
"Hannibal, I want to call you Dad."
He nearly choked on his breakfast.
"What?"
Abigail blinked rapidly, and after steeling herself, repeated her words. "I've lived with you and Will coming up on a year and a half. You guys feed and clothe and shelter me. We play games together. You and I tease Will behind his back, Will and I tease you behind yours,"
Hannibal chuckled at this remark. "Do you now?"
Abigail smiled. "Yeah, we do...And you two are my legal guardians on top of all of that so...I was thinking maybe I could start calling you Dad."
"Both of us?" asked Hannibal tentatively.
"Yes."
Hannibal clasped his hands and rested his chin on them. "Abigail," he began, "Will spoke to me a few months ago about your father. How you miss him."
"This isn't about-"
"Abigail," Hannibal interrupted. "Your father is a man no one, not me, not Will, no one, can replace. Do you understand that?"
Abigail sighed. "Yeah, I do. Doctor Bloom and I discussed that for a while."
"You've been over this with Alana?"
"I told her not to tell Will about it at work," Abigail explained hurriedly.
"Right."
A long silenced passed between the two of them, and then Hannibal said,
"Have you though about how this might affect Will, Abigail?"
Abigail cocked her head to the side. "What do you mean?"
"Well," he replied, cutting himself a bite of egg, "after the incident that surrounded our meeting, Will had trouble, for the longest time, about how he felt about your father's death. He started to see him in places he was not. At one point he even started to feel like him."
Abigail gave a dejected frown, to which Hannibal replied by reaching across the table and putting his hand on hers.
"It would mean the world to him, Abigail," he told her sincerely, "but I must advise you to not use the word Dad in reference to him. For his sake, and by correlation, for ours.'
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Do you think...do you think he'd be alright if I called him Papa?"
Hannibal was impressed with that particular bit of insight. He hadn't even considered an alternate form of the word, a compromise.
He nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I think he'd like that very much."
Abigail bobbed her head gleefully, joyful at having reached at least one conclusion that morning. "And you?" she asked, "What about you?"
Now it was Hannibal's turn to abandon Abigail's eyes. He squeezed her petite hand in his large one, gazing intently on the coffee for a moment before flicking a fleeting glace at her. There was a hope in her icy blue eyes, an electricity he hadn't seen there before.
"I have been called many names, you know," he remarked, "Hannibal Lecter is my name, certainly, but there's Doctor Lecter, there's Hannibal, and there are those I have reserved for your Papa. For Will."
Abigail nodded slowly, not fully grasping what he was getting at.
"Every name's got a face," Hannibal continued, "and as I am 'Doctor Lecter' to my patients and colleagues, so I am 'Hannibal' to those who consider me a friend, and so I am 'dear' to the man I love."
"Right?"
"No one has ever called me by the one you are proposing, Abigail."
She looked away. "Never mind, Hannibal...it was silly."
"Not silly," Hannibal corrected her immediately. "New is more like it."
When Hannibal was finally able to hold her eyes with his own again, Abigail made her own discovery in those dark irises. He was humbled. Hannibal drew in a breath, preparing himself for what he knew needed to be said.
"When you were in the hospital, Will and I felt obligated to help you pick up the pieces. More so than you can fathom. We discovered, with the help of our dear friend Alana of course, that not all those pieces had survived the fall. And so we swore to make it up to you, to give you what your father could not."
Abigail smiled at the sentiment, only to discover that Hannibal wasn't done.
"There is no word more reverent than father, you know. God Himself asked man to address Him as such. It is a word that implies protection, guidance, love."
"My dad tried to give me those things," Abigail began, her voice rising as a lump of tears started to develop in her throat, "but..."
"Sssh," Hannibal returned soothingly, stroking the back of her hand with one of his thumbs, "I know."
After Abigail regained her composure-and apologized for losing it in the first place-Hannibal went on.
"It is how a man feels about his offspring," he told her, and then he added,
"And how Will and I feel about you."
Abigail beamed at him, eyes shining with a fresh batch of tears brought about by an entirely different set of emotions.
"Are you saying yes?" she asked him earnestly.
And though he was a man rarely moved, a gleam appeared in his own auburn gaze. Hannibal patted Abigail's hand, an odd sensation like liquid warmth filling his chest as he opened his mouth to reply to her inquiry.
"Yes, I'm saying yes."
Hannibal rose to his feet and was in the process of placing the dirty dishes in the sink when a pair of slight arms wrapped around his body. His cleaning instantly forgotten, Hannibal embraced Abigail tightly, wrapping one arm around her mid-back and placing his free hand on her head, the crown of which was the current resting point of his chin.
"Dad," she whispered tearfully into his robe, trying to imprint the difference in her mind. "Dad, Dad, Dad..."
Hannibal held her closer to his form. "Promise me something, Abigail."
"Hmm?"
Hannibal looked at her eyes as best as he could muster given the circumstance. "I get to call you Abby, if you're calling me Dad."
He felt her smile.
"I've just been waiting for you to start without my consent if we're being honest with one another," she replied with a light laugh.
An hour later, Will came down the stairs, wiping fresh sleep from his eyes, to find Abigail and Hannibal chatting at the table about what he assumed based on the tidbits he overheard to be about tea.
"What're you two doing up so early?" Will asked, crossing the room. He placed a hand on the back of Hannibal's chair and dropped a swift kiss to the top of his head.
"Abigail made us breakfast," Hannibal replied.
She rolled her eyes. "You did like half the work, and you know it."
Rising to her feet, Abigail wrapped her arms around Will. Pleasantly surprised at the gesture, he hugged her gently, letting her rest her forehead on his collarbone as she liked to do.
"Everything okay, Abigail?" Will asked her when several moments passed with no sign of Abigail releasing him.
"Yes," Abigail responded instantly,
"It's been a wonderful morning, Papa."