A Solution For Entropy

Something awakens Clarice Starling.

Her faculties have been altered for quite some time. Many days. The sound that woke her was an echo of the action itself. The sound of breaking glass. Or rather, breaking porcelain.

The shattering of a teacup.

But despite the distant processing of her auditory senses, Clarice's mind felt clear for the first time. Her memories felt faded, though they were intact. She knew where she was. What she had done. Time was more elusive, not having a strong sense of how long it had been since each of these distinct experiences.

She had been removed from herself. Watching herself do things and plumb the depths of her own mind without any real control. She had said all of those things. She had experienced them all. She knew she had. But it was as though she herself was closed off in a corner of her own mind, protected from all that had happened but viewing it all firsthand.

Strange, how he had managed to do that. He had kept her safe. He had helped her heal, physically and every other which way.

Clarice rolled over in the warm, comfortable bed of the room that had been given to her. It was beautiful and peaceful. Safe, like so much else. It had not occurred to her before now to have any sort of feeling about the place.

In truth, Clarice felt drained. A part of her had been emptied out and left a chasm that she would need to get used to. Things had happened to her without her understanding. No, that was not quite right. She understood what was going on. But from her safe little box inside her own mind, she had not felt any of it yet. Her rational and realistic self had not processed these changes yet.

It was all thanks to Daddy. She'd known all her life that her father and his demise and all that had happened as a result was because of him. All she was, all she had ever believed was thanks to Daddy. Whatever sort of drugs she'd been given, that hypnosis shit or whatever it was, had opened her mind and her memories to allow her to speak to him again. There was a comfort in that. She had been happy to see him. It had not hurt the way she would have imagined it would. Well, nothing had hurt just then. But even now, it did not hurt. She had gotten to have one last conversation with him, to hear him say he was proud of her, that she had done a good thing, that the people who sought to punish her for it were the ones who were wrong. Sorrier bunch never drew breath. He was right about that.

But of course he was. Of course she believed that he was right. His words were a product of her own mind. He'd appeared and looked like that and cut up the orange with his knife just like he did in her memory because that was one of the strongest memories she had of him. She could create his voice and his manner in this hallucination and use it to provide that validation of her actions. Of course she had created that experience to comfort herself.

What had been more important, she realized now, was saying goodbye to him. She'd not been able to as a child. Too young to understand what was going on, too naïve to realize the implications of it all. And for that month he hung on to life in the hospital, Clarice had not known what to do, how to say goodbye properly. And she had no idea what would happen after he died. Ten years old, she could have never ever predicted her mother the chambermaid, the screaming lambs and stealing into the night with Hannah, the Lutheran home. Ten years old, she could have never believed that she'd end up at UVA and in the FBI. And even if she had, even if her little poor white trash child's mind could have come up with a dream like that, she never would have thought it could come crashing down.

Those bones laid out in that bed. Missing only John Brigham's badge that she had placed beside him. Thirty-three years old and Clarice Starling was still trying to please her dead father. That badge mattered to him. Because it mattered to him, it had always mattered to her.

Clarice had cried and sobbed and spoke to her father's dead and clean and dried skull. She told him everything, all the horrible things that had happened to her because he'd been stupid enough to get himself shot by some dumbass kids. He'd left her and changed the entire trajectory of her life. Never again had she lived in a home that felt like her own. She'd relied on her smarts and worked her ass off because it was quite literally all she could do. The world was going to chew her up and spit her out just like any other trash orphan. Daddy's goodness and love of the badge had pushed her to do better. For him, she would do better. But where had it gotten her? Chewed up and spit out anyway. The clean polishing spit of the FBI just looked a little different from the rancid chaw spit that awaited her if she'd not climbed so high. Just gave her further to fall.

And even though she'd told her Daddy all those things, even though she'd cried and raged with that skull in her lap, Clarice's self was safe inside that box in her mind. Watching it all happen. Not feeling any of it. Well, she felt it now.

She had not fully realized how much of herself was filled up by all those feelings for her father. The anger and resentment and the need to prove herself and the loneliness and the fear and the desperation. It had all left her now. Left her empty.

When you come out, bring only what you need. She had done just that. Clarice had brought what she needed out of that room. She had brought nothing but herself. Herself only, not filled up with all that Daddy had left her. She didn't need any of that anymore.

Strange, though, that the gaping hole inside her did not ache. It did not hurt to be relieved of the burden, no matter how formative that burden had been. She could still exist without holding onto all of that.

That was what he'd been trying to help her learn. Clarice had enough clarity to see that now. He was guiding her through her healing. He had tended to her physical wounds and kept her comfortable as her body was repaired. And now he led her down the path of mental and emotional health in these exercises with a wild concoction of drugs to get her through it. She couldn't have done any of this if she wasn't locked away inside herself. But obviously he knew that.

And Clarice was not locked away now. She was lying in a comfortable bed. And somewhere in this house was Hannibal Lecter. For all his brilliance and all his kind care of her now, Clarice could not let herself forget the truth. He was a monster through and through. The exact number of his victims—eaten or not—was unknown. Clarice knew his file better than anyone, having spent all those hours in the BAU basement in her intricately constructed Hannibal's House filled with every little detail of his file and his life spread out before her.

She should not be lying here, she knew. Now that she was able, she should get up and find her gun in that dresser drawer where he'd left it. Oh that slick bastard, he was so goddamned arrogant. He was so sure that he had complete control over her that he could leave her .45 in the room with her and she wouldn't use it against him? Well, she wasn't under his control now.

That's what she'd do. She'd get up and find some proper shoes. Knowing him, he'd gotten her a whole wardrobe full of clothes more elegant and finely made than anything she'd ever worn in her life.

Clarice's mind flashed on the fashion magazines hidden away in her side of the duplex, photographs and editorials of clothes and hair and makeup that had fueled Clarice these last years, the guilty pleasure that sustained her in a way no one else would ever know or understand. Hell, she didn't even ever really understand it. Probably her white trash childhood coming to haunt her again, making her yearn for beautiful clothes she would never have.

But maybe there were some in that closet…

Well, if there were, she'd put on the most durable ones she could find and some proper shoes and get her gun and bring Dr. Lecter in. That's what she had to do. That was the right thing to do. That was what she was supposed to do.

He might find it rude to repay his kindness that way. He had done all that work, used all his incredible expertise to help her, to keep her alive, to fix her. But he should know that this was what would happen. She had rescued him from Mason Verger because she would not allow that monster to torture Hannibal in that sick, cruel way. But that did not mean she wanted him free. No, he was a monster in his own right, and he deserved to be behind bars. That was how this was supposed to happen.

Clarice recalled what he had said to her in Baltimore about Buffalo Bill. What is his nature? He covets. Well, Clarice Starling puts bad guys behind bars. That is her nature.

Even in her own mind, the words feel hollow. Forced.

Putting bad guys behind bars? Who decided who was bad? The law? Well, the law could be perverted to the whims of the powers that be. The powers that kept her low on the totem pole. The powers that wrung all the strength out of Jack Crawford till he had a heart attack right there in the Hoover Building. The powers that kept Mason Verger out inflicting his evil on the world. The powers that allowed Paul Krendler to succeed and turn Clarice herself into a failure.

Well, if that was the case—and it was—then fuck the law. Good and bad, it wasn't that easy. Her Daddy had been too simple to know that. Too damn dumb to see that there was no black and white, just lighter and darker shades of gray. Hell, maybe we're all colorblind anyway.

The conviction in her plan started to leave her. Clarice would get up and look in the wardrobe. She would explore and examine beautiful clothes. She would get some shoes and her gun and do the right thing by bringing Lecter to the authorities. She would.

But maybe tomorrow.

For now, Clarice just turned over in that comfortable bed and closed her eyes again.