Clarice Starling sat in a small cafe, drinking her cafe au lait. A band started playing nearby-a tune she recognised vaguely, something melodious, peaceful-a French lullaby possibly, half remembered from her childhood. That would hardly be surprising, she added to herself wryly. She was in France after all.
Finishing the coffee, she picked up her croissant and spread it with the strawberry jam proffered by the waiter. Some things were too good to miss, although she knew she would have to run later to apologise; she wasn't yet used to treating herself with luxuries like this. Walking past the macaron shops was torture every time. She had only succumbed twice so far, but she was anticipating another relapse today.
Walking through the streets later, a reflection flashed by in a shop window. It made her stop, start, and then stare. She looked so...different. Her hair, short and blond (she had fancied a change), her clothes-if not the height of fashion, not too far down the ladder (her shoes heels and in vogue), and her-well, her general air. She seemed, even from a reflected image, to be sophisticated, modern, special. She felt sophisticated and modern. The special...she was working on.
In the hotel room later she checked her phone. No new messages. She hadn't had any contact for a while now. She'd return there soon, she was sure, but for now...it was just her here. And she liked it that way.
Asleep that night, the Lambs were peaceful. But new events had awakened Clarice's subconscious, and there was more than the screaming of the Lambs to wake her up. Again and again she saw the chamber, the bloody chamber; again and again she took aim...and fired, her finger tugging and her heart shattering.
And, as if on repeat for a million times,her aim was perfect and the lantern hanging from the ceiling exploded in a firework of shards.
She felt herself go through the remembered actions, felt her mind conjure them up. First his pocket, get the key, avoid skin contact. Then the door, lock it behind her, stop, think, wait. Then the stairs (being careful again), go out through the hidden door, close it behind her securely, then the office, the bleeding corpse on the floor acting as the reminder of earlier events to pull her back to reality. The door to that room, the corridor beyond, the officers in formation.
"CLARICE STARLING, FBI!" She screamed, again and again.
"WHERE IS HE? WHERE ARE THEY?"
And then her pause, the other momentous one of the night. In that moment timelines passed before her eyes, visions of futures flashed. The world rested on the point of a pin, fragile and balanced. And she made her choice, and stepped down the path, the pin fell and the seesaw tipped, night after night after night after night.
"THEY WERE BACK IN THE OFFICE SOMEWHERE, I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY WENT!"
Then she had begun sobbing, her whole body convulsing. She wasn't ready. she hadn't been ready to choose, she couldn't do it. But the minute she left that room, she knew what her choice should have been. And she berated herself for it nightly in her dreams.
They hadn't caught him (of course). And she hadn't wanted them to. She had, after all, been in possession of the only key to that chamber (not that they knew that, then or now. It had taken them long enough to find the chamber's existence). There had been another way out though, she was sure of it. They had got in eventually (guns serving where she would not), and there had been no one there, just shattered glass and the faint smell of gunpowder. Well, no one alive, anyway. And he had let her go, she was sure. She had seen how fast his reactions were. There was no way he didn't foresee what she would do the minute her gun tilted at a surprising angle. He had let her go, let her have her freedom. Had he accepted that the test he set her was too harsh? Or had it been a part of his plan all along? The questions battled on in her mind.
So Hannibal lived on, somewhere.
And she lived her own life, an independent woman, divorced from the FBI (honourably expelled-too many questions raised in the raid and left unanswered, partly by her. No proof enough to incarcerate her though-another thing she had to thank him for, the FBI never having been able to prove that she had even been in the chamber) and exploring the world on her own impetus. Money was short, but then, as she had learned-as he had taught her-so was time. Life. She strolled through the capitals of Europe and saw everything through newly awakened eyes.
She felt not one pang of regret.
She felt, in fact, very little.
And everywhere she went, everything she did, along with all the head she turned, a pair of red eyes followed her.
One day, they would connect again with the blue.
Thank you for reading and reviewing-I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I'm not yet sure whether I'll write a sequel (I left it open deliberately), or another story set around the same time-if you have any preference please message me, but otherwise I hope you have a lovely Christmas/Hanukkah and a very happy New Year!
And I'm sorry that they didn't end up together. I just felt that Clarice's decision to completely change her life like that needed to come after more work between them, and more disappointments for her; it was something that needed to feel natural and at this point in time it would have felt forced. Yes, she loves him and he loves her, but the timing wasn't right and it didn't happen because she was still waging her internal war. He forced her hand, so to speak, and he did it too early. Who knows-maybe another time?