Chapter Seven - Apology accepted

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The west wing of the house is the cannibal's lair. They chose the house because it is, for most intents and purposes, two houses on the inside. Two sets of living space, two studies, and enough bedrooms for them to pick and choose. Here, they can hide alone or together.

His rooms resided on the western side of the manor. They were the grand rooms which, at one time, would have belonged to the master of the house. He also commanded the top floor and the main staircase. Apart from the day they moved in, when the house was still empty of furniture and no territories were yet claimed, the doctor had not seen Clarice Starling use the main staircase. There was a back stairway from the servant's kitchen up to the corridor where Starling had taken up residence. She used that one. The doctor believed she liked having her own exit strategy. FBI till the last, was his Starling. It had shaped her, formed a piece of her. He treasured all of Starling, all those pieces. He kept them safe inside a box, safe in the deepest, most protected rooms of his memory palace.

Doctor Lecter's favourite room was the grand master bedroom. It was the only one he had taken much pains in decorating to his taste, and the only one which held a presence of him inside. One entire wall was given over to tall bookshelves, behind glass at some points, full of interesting things. An old grate stood unused on the same wall. He hadn't investigated the chimney yet; it was on a list of things he had to remember to do. A solidly built bed took up almost half of the room. A large desk and chair sat in the other corner, furthest away from the door. It was at the desk that the doctor was seated, poring over one of his many subscriptions; a piece from a cookery magazine. Dr Lecter made a note in the margin of the page, and then lifted his head.

He heard a noise outside the door of his room and set his pen down gently on top of a photograph of the roast he had been annotating. The noise outside the door had been footsteps. The doctor frowned a little in surprise. Starling had rarely come to him, always left it up to him to make the first move. It was symbolic to her, of the power she held over him. He had to come to her for physical attentions, or find some other solution. But if she enjoyed the power that sex gave her, she never made a display of it. The doctor suspected it was more of a protective mechanism. His Clarice did not care to fail in anything she set out to get. Apart from her career at the FBI, she had never really had. She had been so close to finding acceptance there. Capturing him would have been her life's work. What she did not realise was that she had captured him. She had no idea how tightly.

The door creaked slightly and pushed open. He always left it ajar, unless he required privacy. The doctor didn't like being confined inside four walls and a closed door when he did not have to be.

The door swung open and for a moment nothing stirred. Lecter watched intently. Then a small golden shape made hesitant progress up to the door and slowly padded through. It paused to sniff the door frame, tiny nose wrinkling up into velvety folds in his forehead.

Lecter glanced up at the empty doorway above him. Starling would be loitering outside somewhere near. Virgil the mediation puppy could not possibly have made his way down the hall by himself. Nor would he have had the initiative to prod open the door with his nose, even if it was ajar. Virgil - whose name the doctor had picked the name because it was everything a dog's name would not be in Starling's mind - had been bought for the sole purpose of providing a third dynamic to the house. One-on-one was the way Starling and Lecter worked best. But, as with any relationship, breaks from each other's company were also needed. Hence, Virgil, the infant golden retriever puppy, served as a mediator device, something both parties could identify as common and impartial ground.

The puppy spotted him and froze, head lolled slightly to one side, tongue tip protruding. Sensing the human's indifferent body language, the pup stood still, cautious. One opened palm, however, was enough to send him skittering over the hardboard floor to the desk. Front paws up, tail wagging – the perfect image of a young creature. Immaturity evokes protective instincts in adult creatures. Virgil was chosen well.

Starling had tied the ribbon from the box around the puppy's neck, a piece of paper impaled upon it. The doctor reached down, placating the young arrival with one hand while he untied the ribbon with the other. As he took his hand away, the pup cried, so he left it there, toying with the golden fleecy ears while he moved the note into his lamplight.

'Virgil is a stupid name for a dog'.

A smile tugged, uncalled for, at the corner of his mouth. He scanned the rest of the note and flicked it over to check the back.

'He can be called Gil, and he is a messenger, not being returned.'

Clarice Starling's handwriting was slightly wayward, though he could tell she had spent time trying to perfect it, finishing perfectly in the centre of the note. Dr Lecter folded the paper back to its original shape and glanced to the doorway, out into the hall, where Starling probably still stood in darkness.

The pup mouthed his fingers, sharp teeth nipping the skin between his first finger and thumb. A firm flick on the nose was deftly given. The pup stopped biting but continued to clamour for the monster's attention. He picked it up, carefully, for a man capable of so much violence. The focus of the monster's attention, however, was taken up rather more by the scent of Clarice Starling that clung to the infant dog's fleecy fur. His ears, almost as perceptive as his nose, picked out her quiet footsteps down the corridor, down the stairs, then the soft of a door closing in the hallway below.

His mouth twitched again.