Chapter 8: afternoon light
With the drugs out of her system her own dreams return to her. The shrill fear of lambs and horses. Victims she was unable to save. Babies starved to death in their cots, young women with their skin taken from them.
Her father.
It all comes back.
She sleeps just as badly now as she did under the influence of ketamine, she thinks, rubbing her eyes as she sits in far too-comfortable a chair in the drawing room.
Hannibal is sitting in the chair opposite, again close enough that their knees may touch. He is ostensibly taking notes, his face half-hidden behind a large notepad, the sound of the pen soft and grating against the paper.
She drifts, tired, mind peculiar and limber halfway outside of her body. Hannibal's silence is no longer the annoyance it was earlier, rather it is beginning to approach something peaceful, the scratch of his pen becoming her only thread back to herself. Her head is leaning back on the headrest, and slowly she rolls it to the side, taking in the room through half-lidded eyes.
She has seen photos of Hannibal's office back in Baltimore. This space is entirely different in appearance, yet almost the same in feel. The very tall windows. The chairs facing each other. The ostentatious desk. The books and the papers. The shadows and the lights, and Hannibal directing them as he pleases.
She looks back at the large man opposite her, but he's still preoccupied with his notepad, though she hardly thinks he's keeping a journal on her. She's not his patient, she's not in therapy.
She's not.
Without his attention she drifts again, and considers these past few days.
As agreed, she is allowed free rein of parts of the second and third floor during the day, and she is careful to thread softly within the restraints of her freedom. She never as much as glances down the stairs at the front doors. She will sometimes look out of the windows though, and all she can see is snow and nothing. A few times she has looked out of them just after dusk, straining her eyes for artificial lights in the distance. Cars, buildings, streetlights.
There is nothing. They really do appear to be as secluded as Hannibal had claimed.
She is allowed down the stairs to the ground floor for meals, and for her conversations with Hannibal in the drawing room.
Hannibal and Will are careful to give little away during the former, and she returns the favour during the latter. So far it has been cautious and polite conversations, tiptoeing gently across beautiful minefields and hoping she might keep her limbs and her mind. She yearns to know more about the two men though, and Hannibal in turn seems determined to break through her epidermis and burrow inside her veins. She wonders how far he will go to know her.
Will...Will is inscrutable but something like kind, and it drives her insane how she slides down the smooth facade of him, finding no purchase anywhere.
At night she is locked in, but it's not as claustrophobic as before, now that she knows that she will be let out come morning. And when she has things with which to occupy herself in her isolation.
Because on the third floor, up in the rafters and next to what she learns is Will's bedroom, she has found a little study, a nook. It is full of books and magazines and squishy chairs, dark woods and a little woodburner. Will can often be found in here, with the three dogs by his feet as he reads or ties lures. The lures are for spring, he explains to her, for when the river just beyond here comes unfrozen and he can fish. She is welcome here, he says, and she can take books back to her room as well. And she does. But she likes sitting in the nook too, sometimes on her own, sometimes with Will. They don't talk so much, but she listens for his breaths, falls into rhythm with them, holds on to them, could almost feel like she...
"Clarice? Clarice."
She blinks. Hannibal has put his pad down, is leaning forward in his chair and he's stroking her cheek with two fingers. When she meets his eyes he smiles, just a little.
"There you are. You drifted off." His fingers remain on her face, and he is close, so very very close. She can feel his breath on her forehead, and she is faintly surprised that it's warm, not cold. She's got nowhere to go, trapped between him and the chair, and so she stays as still as she can. Tries to meet his eyes, because he wouldn't like it if she didn't.
"You were almost asleep."
"I apologise," she says, rubbing her bare feet against the thick rug. "I'm very tired."
"You don't sleep well?"
She wants to sit up straighter but he's so near and he's still touching her, and if she moves now she'll get closer to him still, and she doesn't know what...how…
"I had assumed you would rest easier free of the narcotics."
"Well," she murmurs, quite careless, "- drugged nightmares give way to familiar old nightmares, I guess."
He pounces immediately, of course, the whiff of trauma must be as thick and delicious as blood in his nostrils. He sits back up, gives her back her space, but she can feel no relief when the look in his eyes is so incredibly hungry.
"You have suffered from bad dreams for a while?"
"Yes," she says, and then, in an attempt to give nothing away for free, reminds him of their tit-for-tat deal: "Where are we?"
He doesn't need to be reminded. He answers promptly.
"Canada. Far north."
And that, she thinks wryly, explains the stark contrast between the seasons. No wonder they are held in winter here, while it had almost been spring in New York when they took her.
"I suppose you can be no more specific?"
North Canada is vast. Too vast. Though how clever of him to keep a bolt hole here.
"Tell me about your nightmares," is his answer.
But she can't. Not even for vital information. He will have to sink his teeth into something else instead. And she is, she thinks bleakly, very confident of his ability to do so.
"Ask me something else," she says.
The slow blink of his eyes and the deliberate way he holds himself tells her that he will not forget this. He has unearthed something delicious, something nourishing, more nourishing even that meat, and he will not rest until it is his. Until he has stripped her off it, taken it from her bones and skin and mind.
But for now, he indulges her.
"Very well. Then tell me, Clarice, how does it feel to be rejected and thrown out by the very institution to which you have devoted your life?"
A change of topic so sudden it hurts, and a subject no less charged. Ouch, she thinks. A low blow: Hannibal Lecter can be petty. But then she had already guessed that. And of course, Abigail Hobbs knew of it intimately, not least in the split second before he slit her throat.
"How can you know it rejected me?"
She knows it's cheating, answering a question with a question, but with an impatient raise of one eyebrow he allows it.
"Will did some due diligence once you began stirring things up in Florence. Your presence there was not sanctioned by the FBI. Rather you had struck out on your own. By all accounts you were a good agent, and your career was once thought to become stellar. But it stalled. What happened, Clarice?"
She doesn't miss his use of past tense. She wonders if it is his way of punishing her for evading him. Still, she finds that it is easy to answer. Too easy. The words flowing over her lips like smooth and clear water. Perhaps she needs this, she reflects as from afar, needs to spew out all out: the hurt and the frustration and the fucking searing unfairness of it all.
"A man with power happened, of course. A Justice Department official. Me breaking the Buffalo Bill case back when I was a trainee stuck in his craw."
She takes a breath, leans back in the chair. She's angry, and there is no way she can hold that close to herself. She remembers the very first time she met Paul Krendler, in Catherine Martin's apartment in Memphis. How could she have known then how much she would come to hate him, and the extent he would ruin her?
"He might have forgiven me that. Overlooked it. But then, Dr Lecter, I committed the most cardinal of sins."
"Which was?" asks Lecter, and looks like he's not wondering at all.
"I turned down his advances. Told him to go home to his wife instead. After that he was hellbent on ending me." And then Jack died, she doesn't say, but the pain of it is almost verbal. She leans forward again, very briefly feeling fearless in the face of the injustice she has suffered. "Can you believe it really is that simple, Dr. Lecter?"
"So," he says, not missing a beat, "- how does it feel to be rejected and thrown out by the very institution to which you have devoted your life?"
She huffs out a laugh. Well. She hopes it comes out as a laugh.
"It feels like betrayal," she answers easily enough, and she finds she doesn't have to consider it. "I did give the FBI my all. I am a damn good agent," the quirk of his eyebrow tells her that he doesn't miss her use of present tense, "- but not as good with the political side of it. Which is fine. What is not fine is that I was set up to fail because of only one thing: I refused to fuck a superior."
He looks like her crudeness is amusing to him, and he looks at her like she's a banquet spread out before him.
"What is his name, Clarice?"
"Paul Krendler," she answers without even an ounce of hesitation. In fact, it feels good to spit his name out, it feels good to symbolically hand it gift-wrapped to one of the most vicious killers ever to exist. It feels a little, just a little, like…
Release.
Well, she thinks sourly, tis a pity Dr. Hannibal Lecter is too busy being a cannibal to properly be a therapist. She also thinks that she just gave him far too much. She hadn't meant to do that. She is left with the uncomfortable notion that Lecter is now halfway wedged into her temporal lobe. Was he ever found to have consumed brain? she wonders half nonsensically, half hysterically.
"Are they looking for me?" she asks. There is something forlorn about how it comes out; not how she had meant it. By the way his nostrils flare he picks it up.
"Of course they are. They are nowhere near finding you. And they won't. You will become yet another I've devoured."
His emphasis on the last word makes her run cold, then hot. It's a threat, and it's...something else. And how strange, she thinks, that his knees against hers now have become a mooring, something tying her to a craggy, dangerous coastline.
She feels like now is the time to end this session, but she must achieve something first. She has given a lot, and received barely anything in return, unless one wanted to count the spurious sense of satisfaction found in setting into words the injustice she'd suffered at the hands of the FBI.
And she doesn't, she doesn't count that. Nothing tangible will come from it.
And she wants something tangible. Real.
With some awkward shuffling, since Hannibal isn't giving an inch, she stands from the chair. She needs movement for this, and she needs distance.
"I want my boon," she says when she's halfway across the room.
It had struck her in the middle of the night, what Will might have meant with what he said during their first dinner together.
"I think I've been very accommodating, Dr Lecter. I've given you a lot today. Quid pro quo."
He has stayed in his chair but has turned in it to follow her movement, his eyes heavy on her, his attention rapt.
"Then name it, Clarice."
She takes a deep breath, but doesn't allow herself to hesitate. He would sense it, and pounce.
"Alana Bloom," she says and stills her pacing, stands facing him with her chin held high. "I want you to leave her alone. I don't want you collecting."
She's starting to be able to read the infinitesimal ticks on his placid face, and she thinks that she has maybe annoyed him. Definitely surprised him.
"You don't even know her," he says slowly. "Why would you waste this on someone you don't know?"
It's easy for her to answer.
"She's an innocent."
Hannibal stands from the chair in one smooth movement, and she starts pacing again, all the better to be on the move, on her toes, should he lash out at her.
"And you a self-proclaimed defender of the innocent and downtrodden, yes, I remember." His voice is bone dry. "Well, let me assure you of this: Alana Bloom is hardly an innocent. Far from it. She elected to play the game. She lost."
"That's not how I heard it."
Hannibal walks up to her then, and it discombobulates her. One second he's over there by the chair, the next he is in front of her. She tries to sidestep, create space, but he cups her cheek, holds her in place with only a light touch. His hand is very warm. She thinks of how he nuzzled her hair as he choked her in the dining room.
"You speak of goodness, Clarice. You want to be good. It permeates everything you do, doesn't it? All your decisions, your reason, your drive. Goodness. Tell me Clarice, do you believe in God?"
"I do not," she whispers, dizzy with how close he is, how dangerous. "Do you?"
"God is a fascinating concept. A more elegant killer than I could ever hope to be."
"Elegant?"
"Of course. God kills that way. Elegance, Clarice, is always important."
"For you?" she murmurs "- when you kill?"
"Always," he replies, voice almost as quiet as hers, but strong and sure. His eyes are darkened as he stands there and gently holds her still. She wonders if he fantasises about killing her elegantly, for having the temerity to use their deal in this way.
"Alana Bloom," she prompts.
Hannibal smiles at her then, and she's never seen his eyes look so expressive. Aflame. He strokes a thumb across her lower lip, presses down ever so gently but firmly, making her wonder if he means to slip inside her mouth.
"Very well," he murmurs, his breath brushing her brow, her forehead. "Alana's life is yours, Clarice. Caretake it wisely," and he steps even closer, the heat from his body quite infernal, "- because you won't get another op…"
"Hannibal?"
They both turn towards the door. Will has it open a crack, looking in at them.
"Mind if I borrow Clarice?"
The deliberate omission of a reason to do so is glaring, and Hannibal and Will have a silent conversation so loud she can almost hear it. She fancies she can see the words in the air above her head, dark and bewinged, and she wishes she could reach out and catch them. Hold them tight in her hand, study them and perhaps understand something of the relationship between the two men. Then Hannibal takes a step back, the warmth of him diminishing, and she can draw a proper breath again.
"Of course," he says politely, and inclines his head.
"Thank you, Dr. Lecter," she tells him. "As always I've enjoyed our conversation."
She can be polite too. She has to be.
"Dinner at eight, as usual," Hannibal reminds her.
"I look forward to it."
She leaves his side, walks towards the door and Will. When she's reached him, is about to slip out through the crack, Hannibal calls out to her.
"Clarice?"
She looks back over her shoulder.
"Yes, Dr Lecter?"
"Until our next conversation here I would like you to consider something."
"And what is that?" she asks, but she can already feel tension spiraling up her spine. She took him by surprise with her little Alana Bloom stunt, maybe even briefly one-upped him, and now he will find a way to make her pay him back.
"Your greatest fear. I would like to know what it is. Think about it, please."
She can feel her shoulders going up, can feel cold sweat kissing the back of her neck. But she nods at him. It figures that he would up the ante, demand more. She shouldn't be surprised.
She takes her leave with Will, and she doesn't say anything until they're up on the second floor.
"Were you listening in?"
"Yes," says Will. "I don't do it habitually. But I did today."
"And so you saved me. Very kind."
He says nothing to that, doesn't confirm or deny that a rescue from Hannibal's machinations was his intention.
She stops outside of her room, not sure if she should go inside or not, unwilling to turn her cell into a refuge. In a sort of uneasy compromise she leans against the wall next to the door, and Will stands before her, an eyebrow raised, waiting for her to speak.
"How much did you hear?"
"Enough," says Will slowly. "I heard about Krendler. I'm sorry that happened to you. Sorry, not surprised."
He looks sincere, but sometimes she thinks it's harder to read Will than Hannibal.
"It's hardly strange that you decided to come after us," he continues. "With Jack gone you really don't have much left, do you?"
He makes it sound like she decided to find them for reasons other than to catch them and drag them back to a secure cell each.
"And you took me with open arms," she says bitterly.
"You are alive," says Will softly.
"But why?"
"Who can say?"
She suspects he can. She suspects that he knows very fucking well why she is alive, why they are standing here having a conversation. But she can hardly force it out of him.
She changes tack a little, looks at him steadily and decides to put his cards on the table.
"I did as you wanted, Will. I saved Alana Bloom."
"As I wanted?" he repeats
"Of course," she says. "You meant for me to use my arrangement with Hannibal to call him off her, didn't you? And so I did, and your little plot worked. You must be pleased."
Will leans against the wall next to her, and steeples his fingers under his chin. She has already identified that as his way to keep from twitching. She turns her head sideways to keep looking at him. His breaths are slow and even, and despite herself she once again finds herself leaning against them, falling into them. His eyes are inscrutable as he studies her, and here comes that singular feeling of danger and calm.
How is she ever meant to make sense of a paradox like that?
"Alana doesn't deserve to die," he eventually says.
She shakes her head, finds herself moving closer to him, just a little, her cashmere top sliding smoothly on the wooden wall behind them.
"Are you trying to temper Hannibal, Will?"
"I do not want to change him," he says in an answer that is not. Or perhaps it is. "When I decided to go with him, join him, I did so with my eyes wide open."
"But sometimes, when he wants to do something you don't agree with, you use whatever means available to you to attempt to change his direction?"
"Something like that," agrees Will.
"And so I am a tool," she says flatly. Inexplicably sad. Strangely disappointed.
"I mean for you to be more than that," says Will quietly, so quiet she can barely hear it. Barely a whisper. In fact, she finds herself sliding closer to him still, so that she can pick up all his nuances, so that she may catch all the things he doesn't really say in her cupped hands.
That's how she gets within touching distance, and slowly, so as to not spook her, Will reaches out. She doesn't pull back. She stays absolutely still and watches how his hand comes closer and closer to her face.
He doesn't touch her. Not directly. He gently picks up a lock of her long hair between two fingers, and seems to study the way the light from the sconce above them reflects off of the strands. There is curiosity and darkness and want slipping and sliding through the shadows of his face, there is something like...like...
She can barely breathe.
Hannibal may have helped himself to all of her space, but up until now Will has kept a careful distance. In fact, she thinks bitterly, he has encouraged her to come to him. She has seen right through it, she even told him that she sees right through it, and yet…
...and yet she stands there and lets him wind her hair about his finger. He's making no more move towards her, stays calmly where he is, quiet, dark. But she, she can feel herself gravitate into him, even if they do not touch. Breathe as he breathes, feel as he feels. Let him do the same to her. Feel her, know her, read her.
See her.
Is it really this easy, she thinks? Is she really this easy?
She opens her mouth to speak - plead? - but then closes it again.
No. No.
She pulls free, abruptly, jerkily. Opens the door and slips into her room, slams it shut behind her. Leans back against it and tries to gather all the pieces of herself back together again. She can hear Will's footsteps moving away, towards the third floor, and she sinks down on the floor.
Guess this cell really is becoming my refuge, she thinks.
It's almost eight.
She sneaks down the stairs among the little pack of dogs, lets the tap of claws against the flagstones and the happy panting of lolling tongues mask the soft pads of her bare feet.
Hannibal is in the kitchen putting the final touches to the dinner, she knows. If she strains her ears she can hear the faint sounds of pans being moved about, accompanied by opera. She's got no idea where Will is, but she thinks he's somewhere upstairs, tying his lures, waiting for spring to give life to the river.
If she is caught now, here, she can always say that she is down early for dinner. She might struggle to explain why she is dressed in every single piece of cashmere and silk loungewear at her disposal, rather than one of the many evening dresses gifted her by Hannibal, but she could conceivably get away with it.
If she keeps going though, if she is found anywhere but right at the foot of the stairs or in the dining room...then she might well find out precisely what Hannibal means with "unpalatable".
She hurries quietly across the hallway floor, dogs running happily alongside her, covering any noise her bare feet might make. With the greatest care, and agonisingly slowly, she pulls open the door to the mudroom.
It's empty, and it looks precisely as it did the last time she saw it. The dogs move past her into the room, inspect their food bowls, drink some water, then by force of habit seek out their baskets.
She listens back into the house. Nothing. All quiet, all peaceful. Forcing herself to move softly and casually she closes the door behind herself. The dogs are settled now, curled nose to tail in their baskets, uncaring of what she is doing. She hurries over to the coat rack and wraps herself in the thickest parka she can find - it smells like Will, she thinks, like winter and deep thoughts - and pulls the hood up over her head. Then she pulls on the fur-lined boots, far too big for her but they will have to do, with her lacing them up as tightly as she can.
Then she opens the heavy door to the outside.
The violently fresh air takes her breath away. The snow and wind, as she had thought, whips cruelly into the darkness. It will make things very difficult for her, she thinks, but it will make things very difficult for her captors too.
She hesitates. She had wanted to do this better. Plan it meticulously, be trusted enough around the house that she could have gathered provisions and more suitable clothes in preparation. Trusted enough to be let outside so that she could at least have assessed the immediate surroundings. But after today….
...today felt like a breaking point. With both Hannibal and Will, in differing ways. Different threats, different temptations. If she stays beyond today she fears for her sanity, for...for herself. Who she is. Her identity.
Clarice Starling. FBI agent.
It's all she's ever worked for. She is not sure she could survive being deconstructed, taken apart and then put back together again. Not sure she could….
She takes a deep breath. Tamps down the dark, sharp feeling that this, escaping, is just...too easy.
Then she slips outside and runs away into the snow.