A/N: Happy New Year (x2, really, because I didn't update this at all last year), and congrats, friends: we all made it out of 2016! As always I'd like to apologize for how long it's taken me to publish something new for this story, and really all of my stories; I got very busy actually having something of a life in 2015, while last year was a total, disheartening wash by contrast. To those of you who are still hanging with this story and I, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy this new installment and that it was at least sort of worth waiting for.
Michelle Lecter hated taking the school bus. Its array of unpleasant noises and smells and jerky, bumpy ride made her want to stick her head out the too-small windows and suck in some fresh air—or else be sick out of them. Too cold in the winter, sticky and uncomfortable in late spring and early fall...she would much rather ride in her father's purring Bentley or her mother's roaring Mustang.
She was fortunate in that, most of the time, she found one parent or the other parked outside her school waiting for her. Not today, though.
After checking for a voicemail from either of them on her cell phone, Michelle had swallowed her pride and boarded the crowded bus. She had endured jostling about for half an hour while she tried—and failed—to do that night's English reading before the bus finally screeched to a halt a block from her house.
Her house. Sometimes, though they had moved in months before her seventh birthday and she was now fifteen, Michelle forgot to think of it that way. Some part of her still thought of that well-worn duplex in Alexandria as "her house." She hadn't even seen the place since Aunt Dee moved out five years ago, but sometimes she still visited it in her dreams.
Her father had confided in her that he, too, returned to his childhood home in his dreams and daydreams despite not having seen it for nearly fifty years.
Not that time mattered, she mused, when you had a memory as perfect as her father's.
The first thing she noticed as she came up the winding walkway to their front door was both her parents' cars parked in the driveway. She frowned. They weren't obliged to pick her up, of course. She could make it home safely without their assistance. But they had, before this, always let her know if something—traffic, overtime at work, or even a spontaneous dinner-date—came up.
Perhaps they had a surprise for her. With summer break around the corner, she supposed they might spring for a nice vacation. Her parents loved to travel. Her mother, though, pinched pennies and loved to plan every detail. All practicality, no whimsy, her father said sometimes, whereas he was the opposite. Would she go along with an elaborate surprise vacation? And why surprise her with it this way on an unremarkable school night?
Michelle shook her head when she realized she'd been standing there for five minutes. Ridiculous. One or both of them had simply forgotten or neglected to pick her up from school. It would hardly be the first time that they got caught up in one another's company. Her father referred to these times, with a cheeky wink, as "making up for lost time," and her mother rolled her eyes.
She tried the door but found it locked. Odd. So she dug out her key, then stepped inside.
The house at first seemed empty, almost unnaturally quiet. But when Michelle got halfway up the stairs, she heard something fragile—a glass, perhaps, or a vase—shatter.
"Clarice, please—," her father protested.
"Is your head so far up your own ass that you never thought anyone would find out?" her mother almost screamed in reply.
Michelle had heard her mother raise her voice before, even yell. This voice, though, didn't even seem to belong to the same woman.
"Clarice—"
"Did you think nobody—did you really think I would never find out?" She paused, maybe to take a breath. "Or did you want me to find out? Is that it, did you to see what I'd do or what I wouldn't, like some kind of sick experiment? Christ, Hannibal—don't touch me!"
"Be still, Clarice," her father said in his most commanding and authoritative voice. Michelle recognized it as the same voice he used when, for instance, she said she'd done her homework and he, knowing otherwise, asked her to produce the evidence. She would be powerless to do anything but show him blank pages. And then he would use the same voice to tell her to finish the assignment and then go straight to bed.
She had never heard him use this voice with her mother.
It must have had some effect, because both of them fell silent.
Before Michelle could decide what to do—hurry down the hall, maybe, and feign ignorance—the door to her father's study opened. "Hello, little bird," he murmured.
From the hall, she saw her mother leaning heavily on her father's desk. She still wore her suit and pumps. Had she come straight home from work to have this argument? But why…? Something here must have set her off.
What did she mean "find out"?
"Are you—are you getting a divorce?" she blurted out without thinking.
She knew kids whose parents had gotten a divorce, were in the midst of one, or were likely to get one. She knew it took a toll on them, that they felt guilty and torn and...what has Mom found out? The Venetian vase that usually occupied that corner of the desk was absent, she noticed. Maybe that's what her mother had thrown, and its shards lay in the corner out of Michelle's sight.
"No," her father said even as her mother said tersely, "We'll see."
We'll see.
A sudden fear, deeper than divorce and two houses and the headache of shared custody, gripped Michelle at that moment: the fear of losing the father she'd waited her entire life up till the age of five to find at all. Whatever he had done, it had drained her mother's face of color. It had shattered the peace of their pretty little world. Could it be dire enough to take him away from them, too?
"Then...then what's going on? Why are you fighting?"
Her mother came back to herself then, it seemed to Michelle. She stood up straight and spoke in her normal voice. "We're not discussing this with you right now, Shelly. We're still working it out ourselves." Maybe she recognized her daughter's anxious expression, because she added, "We were fighting, Baby—all couples do it. I'm sorry we scared you. Why don't you go do up your homework before dinner?"
"We are not getting a divorce," her father added. He sounded far more confident than her mother looked. "So try not to dwell on it."
His smile did not comfort Michelle as she wished it would. Still, she nodded and moved off to her room. When she dug her English book out of her bag and curled up on the cushions of her window seat, however, she struggled to comprehend the words in front of her. Instead, her head spun with both concern and curiosity. What terrible thing had her father done, and who was the "they" to whom her mother had so angrily referred?
Since no more noise came from down the hall—not even any discernible conversation—she resigned herself to living with the mystery of it all. At least for now.
Hannibal placed the lid on the box of files he intended to destroy. He had called his secretary and canceled his appointments for the day, preferring to remain at home to sort through his papers and find those it would be best not to keep. He would also prefer to be arrested at home, he thought, away from any possible crowds or press.
But by now it was four o'clock. Very soon, his daughter would return from school. And on an ordinary day, Clarice would leave her own office and return home around this time.
Would she today?
Or would she look through the Chesapeake Ripper case file again and shudder with revulsion and take her hunch straight to old Jack Crawford?
As ever with Clarice, Hannibal had no sure answer. He had waited all day for the FBI and the SWAT team to burst into his house and take him into custody, half-expected his wife to be among their number. Yet so far, he had not received so much as a phone call. He wondered whether this was a trick. Clarice, ever a good, rule-following Lutheran girl, hardly struck him as the type to stoop to trickery. Did she think that she could lull him into a false sense of security when she had so rashly and furiously declared that she knew he was the Ripper?
Not that she could have hidden it from him, he mused. As soon as he saw her in the house yesterday, standing in the kitchen with her gun on the counter and an empty glass of Jack Daniels beside it, he had known.
Never had he seen her look so disgusted, so horrified, so furious—the emotions, one after another, twisted her lovely features and circled back again, from the moment he appeared in the doorway.
She'd asked if he had thought she would never discover his secret. In truth, Hannibal had hardly considered it after she had initiated their reunion over Michelle. He had wanted her—to toy with her, to pick that fine brain of hers—and, because she had insisted on coming back into his life and bringing their child with her, he had never again stopped to consider what the consequences of his crimes being revealed not by the government but by his wife might be.
Downstairs, the door leading in from the garage opened and closed again. His fingers flexed. He had not heard Clarice's car, and that ridiculous engine of hers was loud and powerful enough to cut through any but his deepest thoughts.
It could still be a trap.
He rose to his feet and struggled for a moment with his fight-or-flight instinct.
Perhaps she was preparing herself. He imagined her downstairs, summoning her courage, checking that her piece was loaded and debating whether or not she could actually shoot her husband if it came to that, wondering if he would attack her if she attempted to bring him in…
Her feet on the stairs made the wood creak a bit. Hannibal stood and folded his hands behind his back. He listened as her footsteps approached the office door, paused—then continued down the hall. Had she lost her nerve? Decided he might be in the bedroom instead? Going to the door, he rested his hand on its handle.
The hall was empty when he looked out. At last, grown weary of waiting and wondering, he called: "Clarice?"
"Bedroom."
He wandered towards the bedroom door. Last night, she'd taken the guest room, apparently unwilling to sleep beside a monster for even one night more. He'd felt the sting of that. A woman had turned against him for who and what he was once before, though the circumstances had at the time hardly resembled these. He knew already that his wife had an almost too-keen sense of right and wrong. Her revulsion therefore may have cut him to the quick, but it did not surprise him.
The doorway framed Clarice's body as she shrugged off her silk blouse. She had already discarded the fine linen trousers she'd worn. He saw them tossed over her vanity chair. It left her mostly naked, small and vulnerable-looking.
Vulnerable only to someone who did not know her, Hannibal mused.
Still, she was clearly not hiding an ambush nor even her weapon. Instead, she reached for a pair of well-worn jeans, pulling them on without acknowledging him. Then she crossed to the chest of drawers and dug out an over-sized sweater that may once have belonged to her husband.
"I hope you've been working and not sulking," she said at last. He could still detect an icy edge in her voice. Hmm. Not forgiven, then.
"My dear?"
He thought he saw her roll her birthstone eyes. She gestured to the chair. "Sit, please."
Even as he opened his mouth, Hannibal thought better of crossing her at this particular moment. Her decision to not yet hand him over to her superiors, or at least her hesitation to do so, astonished him. And he had not yet destroyed his share of the evidence. Even he knew when not to push his good fortune too far.
"Thank you." Clarice folded her arms and seemed to consider him for a moment. "So, did you get anything done today besides sitting up here wringing your hands?"
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Oh, don't play coy, Hannibal." Seeing her thus, impatient and frowning at him, Hannibal thought it a shame that they had not had a more wayward child, on whom she could have cultivated this stern, no-nonsense image.
"Clarice, I wouldn't insult you by playing games just now."
The lines of her frown deepened and a few beats of silence passed between them. Finally, she said, "All right."
She crossed to the door and closed it, then almost leaned against it for a few heartbeats before straightening.
"I know there's evidence that can—that does—incriminate you. Even with your name and your reputation, you wouldn't stand a chance in front of a jury if the FBI and a prosecutor got their hands on just a quarter of it. And I know where to find that evidence.
"And frankly, it all disgusts me. I wanted to pretend it wasn't true. That I had to be mistaken." Clarice shook her head. Some of her chestnut hair tumbled into her eyes, and the emerald on her finger glittered as she pushed it away again. "I should've gone straight to Crawford. Almost did. Hell, I went to my car and just about had a panic attack. I was a mess. You just saw the tail-end of it.
"Every time I started to get out, I pictured somebody pulling Michelle out of class, or her coming home to an empty house—having to explain to her where you were. Why you weren't at home or probably evercoming home."
Hannibal watched with interest as her fingers tightened into a fist and then relaxed again. The monster in him even now savored the anguish that dripped from each word she spoke like some terrible, tangible thing. Yet the husband—the lover—wanted to offer her some cold comfort. He said nothing, however, and neither moved nor spoke.
"I couldn't do it. And, dammit, I still can't do it. Take my baby's daddy away from her I mean." Clarice wet her lips and blinked rapidly, but otherwise she did not falter.
That's my girl.
"At any rate, we had an agreement."
That at last made him smile. They had indeed come to an understanding of sorts when he had first brought up the idea of marriage. He had parallel parked his beloved Jag with care outside of their favorite cafe and turned to her, taking her slim fingers in his.
"Before we discuss this further, I have to give you fair warning, Clarice."
"Do you turn into a werewolf at the full moon? Ha ha."
He smirked. "Really."
"Well, you never know," Clarice joked. "What, then?"
"I just thought you should know that I take that kind of commitment very seriously. Put simply, Lecters don't divorce."
She flat-out laughed at that, the tension suddenly gone from her delicate features. He loved her laugh—the way it made her eyes glint like real sapphires.
"That's a good damn thing," she said, and her words came out with more West Virginia twang than he'd ever heard from her before. "Because I'll have you know, Dr. Lecter, that Starlings don't divorce, either."
Then they laughed together. In that moment, they tacitly agreed that should they ever get married, their vows would bind them—that they would work to repair whatever damage time and disagreements and the difficulties of cohabitation and child-rearing did to their union.
And until now, until he had returned home yesterday afternoon only to be confronted with a red-eyed and horror-struck wife, Hannibal supposed they had done a good job honoring that agreement. He had to admit that in the last twenty-four hours that conversation had not occurred to him till now, and as ever Clarice surprised him by bringing it up. But then he could never have predicted that her attachment to her dead father's memory and the trauma of losing him so young would be stronger than her desire to protect their daughter from danger.
He felt strangely grateful that she had not, at the very least, tried to keep Michelle away from him from the moment she realized the truth.
Returning to the moment, Hannibal smiled slightly. The determined set of Clarice's mouth told him that she had more to say. "You have conditions," he predicted.
"You haven't even heard the pitch."
Hannibal raised his brows at her. "Not in detail. But I think it's safe to assume that it involves preserving my freedom, my marriage, and keeping custody of my only child."
"Touche."
He settled back in the chair and crossed his ankles.
"Then I'm all ears."
Clarice stopped on the path through the woods—just stopped and stared out into the trees.
How did I get here, she wondered. She'd made it to forty with a well-off husband, a smart and well-behaved child, and the career in Behavioral Science she'd wanted for years. Yet that longed-for goal, that spot on Jack Crawford's team, had shone new light on the rest of her seemingly charmed life and revealed that behind the polished veneer lay ugliness and rot, the likes of which she could never have begun to imagine.
For the first week after her horrible discovery, the old nightmares of which she'd thought she had been rid for years came back to haunt her. She woke in the unfamiliar guest bedroom of her own house to find the sheets half-soaked with her cold sweat. Night after night, the truth loomed before her in the dark, still room. She had, in spite of all her best efforts, never saved any of her lambs. But worse than that—far worse—was the realization that she had married a wolf. Married him and been none the wiser for all these years. Not until they'd put the case file on her desk…
She'd had her doubts about even dating him again, never mind marrying him. Yet she hadn't remembered until far too late how how intoxicating and disarming his company could be.
And she had meant every word when she'd told him that Starlings did not divorce any more than Lecters did. She had committed to him—as a partner, as a co-parent—and she was too principled to back out of that commitment, even in these dreadful circumstances.
That didn't, however, mean that she was willing to fall with him.
No, Clarice had worked too long and hard for what she felt she was due to lose it because of him. As sick as Hannibal's actions made her feel, she knew better, at least, than to think they had anything to do with her—that she shared responsibility for the blood on his hands. That logical response hardly lessened the sickening guilt that pooled in her belly, but it was all she had to keep her grounded.
All but her daughter, at least.
Michelle would not, could not, know the truth about her father. That conviction, too, had driven Clarice to make her bargain with Hannibal: her silence for his reformed behavior. His freedom with her and their child in exchange for a peaceful life. No more murders. Ever.
As she'd predicted, he agreed readily enough to that. If only she felt certain that he would follow through. He did not lie—at least not directly—but their bargain still left her with nagging, gnawing doubts.
A small voice in her mind that sounded very much like Ardelia Mapp's hissed at her, as it had many times over the past week, that the only way to be certain, to preserve more lives, was to go directly to Crawford. Confess her sins (or her husband's at least), as the Lutherans had once taught her to do to God, and wash her hands of him. But Clarice pushed the voice away, selfishly, because she could neither stomach the disgrace herself nor bring it down upon Michelle.
Yet Clarice had one other reason for wanting to keep her husband's good name in-tact, and it was more self-serving even than those, that she could scarcely bring herself to admit even to herself.
She loved him.
Her new understanding of him as a dangerous criminal—a murderer—a monster—had changed her perspective in plenty of ways. She saw Hannibal, their marriage, and the brief affair that had created Michelle differently. She now saw even his tutelage of her in a different light. And yet her feelings for him remained unchanged.
The basest part of her, the part that yearned a little each time she saw him, thought it would be a shame—a waste!—to put such a fine beast, if beast he truly was, in a cage.
Clarice felt shame as well as guilt for thinking those things. Still, she thought them and, more shamefully, had acted upon them.
"What was I supposed to do, let my kid lose her dad?" she said aloud, as if she could have an argument with the voice in her head. "Let my career crash and burn because I married an asshole?"
The words died with no answer in the cool fall air. Clarice gazed into the treeline for a few moments before shaking her head. Then she resumed her jog, slowly first, then increasing to an almost punishing pace. Maybe a small part of her still thought that she could run away from her problems—from the guilt, from the very knowledge that had crept in and stained her rose-colored life with oily black.
"Hannibal?"
"Yes?"
Clarice paused by the kitchen door, watching as her husband pulled the cake out of the oven. If her father had been able to cook or bake, his children never knew it. Instead, apart from days when he brought home oranges and SNO-Balls, Clarice's mother dominated the memories of her childhood kitchen. She herself could burn water, though, so she left cooking, baking, and the rest to Hannibal. He relished it, and she often got caught up in watching him.
The cake he set down on two cooling racks before removing his oven mitts and turning his full attention on her. Even now that they were married, Clarice still felt the force of that attention, the heat of that piercing gaze...
"The house looks wonderful. You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble." He wanted Michelle's birthday party to double as the debut of their newly-bought and decorated home. His had been the money sunk into most of that decorating, but they had chosen the colors and furniture together. He had praised her all the while for her "developing taste," as he put it.
"Nonsense. It was no trouble." He tilted his head. "You didn't just want to talk about the party, I imagine."
"Er. Well, what I—it was—silly."
"Try me," Hannibal challenged with a smile that might really have been a smirk.
Clarice chewed her bottom lip. "Well, since it's Michelle's birthday, I was...just thinking about how big she's getting. And I know we didn't plan on her..." Suddenly, she felt foolish and straightened up, looking him squarely in the eye. She was his wife, a grown woman, the mother of an almost-seven-year-old! Get yourself together, girl. "I only wondered if you'd like another. Another baby, I mean."
He looked curious, then thoughtful. She watched his face closely, though she never felt like she could read him.
"I'm not sure that would be wise," he said at last.
"I'm not that old," Clarice said, unsure why she now sounded so defensive.
Hannibal chuckled. "Nor am I implying that you are. I am the cradle-robber in this marriage."
"Ha, ha."
His laugh faded into a small smile. "Would you like another baby, Clarice?"
"I...I don't know. I never really thought about having kids, but it turns out that I like being somebody's mama."
"And you are a wonderful mother," he complimented. His praise still thrilled her, even after all this time. "But I think, perhaps, we should focus on the child we have. She's adjusting to a great deal of change just now."
"Yeah. That's true," Clarice admitted. She also had her career to consider. New doors had opened up to her now that she was married and Michelle had a second legal guardian. Her dreams of Behavioral Science no longer seemed so distant. Besides, they had years before Michelle grew up and flew the nest. She had only wondered what having and raising a baby might be like in the comfortable bonds of marriage, rather than doing so plagued by fear and uncertainty and struggling to make ends meet every month.
She met him in the middle of the kitchen floor putting a hand against his chest. As ever, his heart beat steadily and strongly beneath her palm. The feel of it coaxed a smile from her.
"I just thought it was worth discussing. That's all. Hey—the cake smells delicious!"
Before Hannibal could swat her hand away, she stole a dollop of his homemade buttercream icing from its bowl on the counter. He grabbed her hand, though, and sucked the sugary treat off of her finger himself. When he'd finished, he looked so damn pleased with himself, like a cat who'd gotten the cream. Clarice tried to scowl. The way her heart had begun to race made it difficult, though.
"What do I always tell you about the relationship of surprise and anticipation to food?" he purred. Then he bent his head and kissed her. She could taste the sweetness of the icing. Everything else—her thoughts about babies and her career and the smell of the freshly-baked cake—melted from her mind, chased away by that heady kiss.
When Clarice came back to the present, she'd reached her car. She leaned against it for support, breathing hard from the pace of her jog, and tried to close her eyes tightly against the hot tears that threatened to fall. So many things had made her cry in her nearly forty years. Hannibal himself had, once, by leaving her so abruptly, and leaving her pregnant no less! But she decided as she caught her breath in the cool, crisp autumn air that she would not cry over him again. After everything he had done, and what she had just done for him—or rather what she hadn't—he deserved none of her tears.
She opened her eyes again. Pulling the door of her beloved Mustang open, she slid inside, took a moment to just breathe, then another to finish off her bottle of water. Then she turned the key and smiled as the engine roared to life. Driving had always given her peace of mind, and she needed it now more than ever.
She was, after all, going home to live a lie with a monster.
Remember to leave a review!
