Quid Pro Quo (clean version)
Let Me Run
The stitches were sewn meticulously as a bright beam from the small penlight cast shadows along the sterile table. A bead of sweat dropped onto the skin and was left there in its place, unmoving. After a few minutes, the penlight was turned off and a rustling of clothes could be heard in the darkness. In another room, a cozy fire burned in a large stone fireplace. A decanter was opened, a drink poured, and the figure took a place in the large velvet chair by the fire. The fire's reflection flickered in the large set of brown eyes, and as they closed, the figure exhaled, as if in pain, but not physically. The eyes opened again and gazed into the fire.
Clarice Starling shifted her weight from her left shoulder and stared at the television blankly. She'd heard of the news segments highlighting "Special Agent Starling" for years, and watching the segments highlighting "Ex-Special Agent Starling" had become a mundane way to pass the time in the afternoons. She pondered over what Dr. Lecter was doing at this very moment, if he, too, was watching the news programs, and she shuddered at the thought of his icy eyes being fixated on anything.
She'd met him ten years ago, on an "interesting errand," and he'd ultimately escaped his maximum security holding and had managed to evade the police and the FBI during the following years. Then, after ten years he'd come back into her life, only to escape again, this time costing her everything she held dear, and she wondered if he realized that he was to blame for this. Of course he does, she thought, but does he feel guilt? She thought for a moment and realized that he did seem to have feelings, vague as they may be; however, but they were there at times. She'd saved his life, only to keep him from death in order to apprehend him for his crimes; he'd saved her life in turn, but why? Why did he risk his own life to save hers, to carry her from danger on bare feet, and then treat her wounds? Did he want something from her? If so, why had he never let it be known?
"Quid Pro Quo…Yes or No…Clarice…"
It seemed he only wanted personal information, facts, from her, but why? Did imprisonment for eight years in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane under the cruel thumb of Dr. Chilton make him vulnerable to visitors? No, that couldn't be it: he'd never talked to any of FBI Section Chief Crawford's men before. Had it been the fact that she was a woman? Had the relief of seeing and smelling a woman after all those years made him susceptible to conversation? Clarice doubted it. It hadn't been in Dr. Lecter's nature to be unkind or discourteous to her in any way whatsoever; he'd never once made any sexual advances toward her.
At this thought, Clarice shuddered as the memory of Miggs
"Multiple Miggs in the cell next door…"
throwing his semen on her
"I can smell your cunt," he hissed.
played itself back in her mind. She remembered the phone call from Crawford saying that Miggs was dead, and the near satisfaction in Lecter's voice and manner concerning Miggs' death on her next visit, and she could almost smell the odors of the hospital ward.
She closed her eyes a moment and then opened them.
She stared into the distance, letting the television fade into an array of blurred colors, and wondered why she didn't hate Dr. Lecter. In her childhood, her father had been a police officer, which had first sparked her interest in the field of law. She'd gone to the University of Virginia where she'd graduated with honors, having a double major in psychology and criminology, and then went on to the FBI training academy, where she'd been a student and got the assignment of speaking with the infamous psychiatrist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. She then continued her work and became an agent in the Behavioral Sciences Section of the Bureau, only to once again encounter Lecter, lose him, and in turn, be stripped of her job and all that she'd worked for. She figured that she should hate him…in fact, she wanted to hate him, yearned to hate him, but for some reason she could not. She despised the fact that she couldn't ascertain why this was, but on some level, she decided that she probably didn't want to name it at all.
She let her eyes return their focus on the television a moment longer before switching it off.
A faint smell of L'Air du Temps made Clarice open her eyes. She rolled over slowly, careful not to put too much weight on her shoulder, and checked the time. She lay back in bed and breathed in deeply to find the scent gone. Lecter's long ago, three-minute psychoanalysis of her life had not been far from the truth, and in anger, she'd thrown out her bottles of L'Air du Temps to ease her mind. She felt, after that, that she had a form of control over her life, her private things not so obvious to the trained eye, and she was grateful in a way.
She sat up in bed and yawned, thinking that she was late for something. She paused a moment and then remembered that she no longer worked as an agent, and in fact, wasn't late for anything at all. Depressed at this fact, she lay back down into bed and stared up at the ceiling. On this morning, she found herself consciously upset with Dr. Lecter, and when she felt she could almost hate him, a pang of guilt echoed through her. Angry at this fact, she rose back up out of bed and went into her kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee, realizing that she now needed the vice to stay awake, even in the middle of the day, and glanced out the window. The neighborhood was still, everyone off to work and their lives, and Clarice was envious for a moment. She then put those thoughts out of her mind and went to get dressed.
She jogged on the sidewalk, and the distant, dapper voice of Dr. Lecter came to her once more: "I came half way round the world to watch you run, Clarice. Now let me run." As if willed by some unseen force, her feet moved faster, carrying her along, and she felt an anger that she hadn't felt in years. She jogged past the market, the drug store, through the park, and back around the block before she stopped to rest, and she unknowingly glanced behind her to be sure there were no shadows following her.