So I was coming up with this whole other backstory for Marina when I just went fuck it.
I am so sick of them killing off Kacey Rohl's characters so I fixed it. Well, some of it. I also just wanted to see what could become of Abigail if she ever got out from under the thumb of manipulative serial killers - cos, honey, those are not good for your health.
Anyhoo, this takes place partway between The Magicians s2e3, and I'll be jumping around a bit throughout the course of the story. Going back into s1 a bit, early s2 and flashback's of Marina's past, including her time at Brakebills and her life as Abigail.
This story just sort of assumes that Martina was able to transport him and Marina back to the apartment before Alice was able to kill him. Basically the hot second they arrived there.
In terms of Hannibal, this plays off the many world theory. In this world, Abigail was the soul survivor of the Red Dinner. In this world, Marina does not die at the hands of Reynard.
It's not necessary for you to have seen Hannibal. The only character you really need to know is Abigail and her history will be fleshed out through Marina. That said, if you have seen Hannibal you're of course going to understand more. But I'm hoping it won't be too confusing. Let me know if it is.
And I really hope you like this. Marina needs more fics. Seriously I'm dying here.
Title from 'Capsized' by You + Me
...
Will: It's hard to grasp...what would've happened...what could've happened, and in some other world did happen.
Abigail: I'm having a hard enough time dealing with this world. Hope some of the other worlds are...easier on me.
- Hannibal, Season 3, Episode 2
...
She's known some monsters in her time, but this guy really takes the cake. Where the fuck did Julia find him? 'Creepy Sadists Anonymous'?
Her one saving grace is that he likes listening to the sound of his own voice, clearly. It might very well have sent her to sleep if the things he was saying weren't so damn terrifying, and she's accustomed to terrifying. But it's stalling him. Distracting him from his real purpose - which seems to be to eat her, piece by agonizing piece.
Far from original, in her experience.
But he's talking and that's good. Or she might be down more than a finger by now.
(don't think about it, don't think about it)
The meows have stopped. At last. She hopes that means it's over.
Whatever magic he used to keep her heart still beating.
The blood still rushing.
But it hasn't started to congeal yet and every so often she swears she can feel a twitch.
She swallows against the nausea and falls behind her mask, the one it took her so many years to construct. She knew, in fashioning it, that it was a death mask. The one she'd wear one day when the hunter had cornered her and torn the life from her one last time. But she would not go down as prey. She would not go down, weeping and afraid. Begging for another breath, just one more . . .
She's already done that, knows the sequence of events by heart, knows it does nothing to save you, only prolongs an agonizing hope.
If death is to come, she will meet it with dignity this time. She will not let her killer see her fear, feed off it for his own pleasure.
Can he hear her heart, though?
How it pounds in her chest? The sweat clinging to her neck and hands, mixing with blood.
He looks like he can. Like he knows.
Knows her for the act she is.
They always know.
How the fuck did she get herself into this?
Yesterday
"You kidnapped me, Julia!" An actual kidnapping, complete with hood and zip ties. Her wrists still ache. Though her rage proves a comforting balm for that. "After everything I did for you. And to top it all off you were idiot enough to summon a God that would like nothing better than to eviscerate me." She reconsiders. "If he's feeling generous."
Julia doesn't look any happier with the situation than her. Good. "Look, I know alright. You really think you can beat me up about that any more than I already have? You think I don't know I fucked up? I know. These people are dead because of me. Because I fucked up. I was . . ."
Well, now she just feels like a bitch.
Nothing new, granted, but it is messing with her justifiable rage.
A part of her, a part she thought she killed a long time ago, wants to reach out to Julia. To do . . .
What?
She doesn't know.
Something.
Something to make that darkness in her eyes fade away. Not disappear. Things like that don't just disappear. They stay with you. A shadow you can never really shake. But you can hide from it, in the dark. You can escape it for a time.
And, Jesus Christ, she wants that for Julia.
She is so screwed.
Frustrated, she looks away.
Fuck it.
"It's not your fault."
Julia blinks at her, as if coming out of a daze. Marina can only can guess at the places she has been. She has her own dark worlds to disappear into, knows the struggle it takes to come back. "What?"
"What happened? It's not your fault. You weren't the only one to summon him and you sure as hell weren't the one to tear out your boyfriend's heart and cut his groupies' throats. He used you." She shrugs. "It's what monsters like him do. Anyone could have fallen for it."
Not her.
"Not you."
Not now.
"True. But not everyone can live up to my shining example." she says, trying to play it off, not to hint at the buried truths the comment has unearthed. Seeing that distance in Julia's eyes, how her words may be reaching her but they aren't being heard, she hardens her gaze. "It wasn't your fault."
But Julia looks away. "I betrayed them."
"What?"
"My friends. Quentin."
Fuckboy? "Fuckboy?" What the fuck did he have to do with this. Oh well, it's not like she cares. He could be in ferret form right now and it wouldn't cause her anything but amusement. "I wouldn't feel too bad about that."
Julia turns back to her and there's a steel in the glare of her eyes that Marina hasn't witnessed in her before. One she hoped at seeing, once upon a time. A dispassionate fatality.
Funny. She feels none of the satisfaction she once thought she might at seeing it.
"I don't. That's the problem."
And she can see it really is.
...
Will: What if no one died…?
Abigail: In some other world?
Will: In some other world.
- Hannibal, Season 3, Episode 2
...
Reynard's gone. It's the first thing she notices when they pop back into Marina's apartment.
The next is the body.
Marina, sprawled unceremoniously in the center of the carpet, eyes closed, lips parted with blood.
And no knife.
Fuck.
She can only stare, despair rising from that hollow inside her - where it waits - always waiting - for the chance to consume. She won't let it. But she feels the ice of its breath on her now, edging closer.
And she quakes.
'It's not your fault.'
Oh but it is.
Martin makes his way over to the body, curiosity on his face as he inspects.
What is she supposed to do with a body?
Marina was the one to deal with-
Should she leave it? Like Hannah?
Julia looks away, is surprised she can still feel disgust with herself.
He bends over, reaches out a hand.
She snaps back.
"Don't touch her." The words come before the thought even appears. She can't bear it. The thought of him touching her.
She would have hated that.
And there's this clawing, tormented need to protect her. From him. From everything.
Too little, too late.
Protection is beyond her now. The dead have no use for a shield.
She's learnt that much.
"Are we going to let her bleed to death then?" He asks with a casualness that strokes every fire inside her, the ones she had long since thought turned to ash. But she can't think beyond his words.
"What?"
"It seems our cat does indeed have nine lives." He seems (quietly) pleased with this turn of events. Like a cat himself, one whose just found that the mouse within its jaws still wriggles. If he lets it go, the chase can continue, with so much more fun to be had.
A mouse he happily abandoned to another predator.
You were the one who chose to trust him.
No, use. Not trust. Never that.
I'm sure that distinction will make all the difference for Marina.
Stop. She can't think about that now.
Hastening forward, she drops by Marina's side, fingers fumbling for her neck. A flutter, faint but there. He wasn't lying. "We have to do something quick. Can you heal her?"
"I could," he says in such a way that Julia might as well have asked him if he could change the TV channel. If he was so inclined. She whips her head up to glare at him, hates the position of him towering over her. "But I think it would be more entertaining to watch you do it."
They don't have time for this. "I don't know how."
She's never taken the time to learn healing spells, has never had the knowledge or power to heal something of this scale. Now that she has the power, the knowledge alludes her. And the fucker isn't tripping over himself to give it to her either.
"I'll walk you through it," he decides after too long a pause. Oh, he's just loving this.
"Fine. Just do it now."
"What, no please?"
She glares at him. With every second, she can feel Marina's life slipping further away. She can actually feel it. This close. It hums in the air around her fingertips. And it's getting weaker. "Fucking please."
"That's better. Alright," he straightens his suit, which has become slightly ruffled in their unexpected side trip to Fillory (Quentin is never going to forgive her, not a second betrayal), "to start with, you should lay your hands on her stomach, over the wound there." She does as he says, own stomach turning as hot, thick blood soon consumes her from the palms up. The hum gets louder at the contact and a tingling passes down her spine. "Can you feel it? Her life?"
"Yeah," she croaks.
She can feel it dying.
"Focus on that feeling, your need for it to continue."
Julia blinks. "That's it?"
"You have the powers of a god now. Your magic should know how to do this, instinctively. If it was you in her place, you would already be healed. You simply need to direct its focus from the preservation of self to other."
She doesn't know if she believes it's that easy. True, since Reynard, so many spells have now come 'instinctively' to her. It feels too easy, almost cheap. It was a struggle before, working to find the magic, to perform it, to control it. But it felt more real that way. Like it was really hers. Like she'd earned it.
But that's the thing. This magic isn't hers. It's His.
Closing her eyes, she banishes the thought to that place where she keeps all the others. To rot and decay, and rise again to haunt her later. She cannot bear it now.
Instead, she thinks of Marina. Marina and the way she looks when she's doing magic. The elated smile that would sometimes pull her face, the spark in her eyes of true life. A bird, at last, taken to flight.
She has always looked most like herself, it seems to Julia, when there is magic on her fingertips.
In the same way Julia has always felt most like herself when there's magic on hers.
She keeps that image in her mind, listens to the hum, feels the vibration, and prays.
Movement. Liquid running through her fingers. But now it is running in, not out.
She opens her eyes.
Beneath her hands, heat burns, as though Marina's stomach has suddenly become alight. She knows it's flesh and bone working up the will to knit itself back together, cells firing up. She can feel it.
She's never felt such energy.
As she watches, some of the blood starts to bleed its way back in. Gross.
Achingly slow, drop by drop.
But all the while the hum is getting louder.
Ripples beneath her hands, muscles replenishing, skin stretching its way back across, a fragile protective layer . . .
Until it's finally done.
The blood that's left behind dries and congeals on black fabric and Marina's chest rises and falls, steadier by the moment.
Hesitantly, she takes her hands away, waiting for the axe to drop. For the wound to reopen and blood to come pouring out.
She waits for the silence of a still heart.
But her ears ache with a reassuring hum and where her hands once rested there is flesh, pink and raw, knitted in a scar.
She wonders if that could have been avoided. If she could have made it as good as new.
Is Marina picky about things like scars?
It doesn't matter. She's alive.
And Julia wants to cry.
She blinks, sitting back on her heels. It's an urge that hasn't broken through since she told her story to Quentin.
But it's there. Real.
And in no time, it is gone.
"Passable," Martin remarks, studying her work. "Not the most ascetically pleasing work I've seen but you managed it tremendously quick. She might be out for a bit, but the worst is over."
She ignores that, takes a hold of Marina's uninjured hand, holds out another for Martin's. "We should go. Before Reynard comes back."
Reynard. Who now has the knife.
She can't think about that.
He stares at her hand, taking his time before, with a put upon sigh, clasping it with his own. They're back in her apartment before she can blink.
"I'll be with the TV if she suddenly decides to croak," he informs her cheerily, marching off to the living room.
She notices, after some time to adjust, that he was considerate enough to transport them to her bedroom. She levitates Marina onto the bed, wincing as the jostle of her body hitting the mattress causes her to groan in her sleep.
Then she sits. And breathes.
And tries not to think about how fucked they are.
That lasts all of about five minutes.
A sharp intake of breath wrenches the silence. Julia flinches, looks over just in time to catch Marina, eyes snapping open, body jolting upright as she chokes on too much air.
Julia's actions seem slowed somehow. It can't be more than a second but it feels like it takes forever to reach her, too long.
Her hands find her sides, her shoulders, fumbling as she helps her into a sitting position. Should she be sitting? Maybe lying down would be best. Healed or not, her stomach just had a hole in it.
But Marina is fumbling, gasping, eyes blinking harshly as she rapidly takes in the world around her, searching, searching.
For Reynard, Julia realizes.
She's looking for Reynard.
"Hey, it's OK, it's OK," she rushes, hands finding her face, cupping her cheeks, making her focus on her. She knows what it is to wake up and look for Reynard in a room, never seeing him but some part of you screaming that he's there. He's there. If you can just find him. Find him before he finds you. It's an exercise in torture. "You're OK. He's not here."
The words chip away at the fog of terror, inch by inch, finding their way into Marina's consciousness. She still breathes too harshly, skin hot and trembling under her hands, but she stops trying to escape her grip. Leans into it even.
"He's not here."
Wide eyes. "Julia?"
"Yeah, I'm here." She tries to put all the assurance she can into that one sentence, a line to tether Marina to the present, like she wishes she'd had in those first minutes after Reynard had left. An anchor.
For a moment, they seem to breathe in unison.
Then break.
Short-lived relief flees her face and rage takes its place, sick and hot, rising up to defend its host. Julia sees it a split second before Marina reacts.
Hands shove at her, pushing her away. Hands that once sought to sooth are ripped from their purpose. She blinks, falling back, would have sprawled across the floor if the other woman wasn't still so weak.
It's the shock more than anything that moves her.
"Get the fuck off me!"
It makes sense, Julia thinks, shutting down, the calm never lasts. Especially between them.
...
"In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat,
although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in:
these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious."
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies