Typhoid and Swans

Chapter 11: fragments

Clarice wakes on a broken gasp. Her neck hurts; she'd fallen asleep curled up in the Chesterfield. She has dreamt, but she can remember nothing of her dreams beyond a confused jumble of antlers and smoke. That, and the certainty that those dreams had been nightmares.

She staggers from chair to bed and lays down, stretches out, and attempts to take stock.

The wound on her belly stings and burns, her neck is tender, her joints ache and her head pounds. She is starving, and thirsty, and her tongue feels too big for her mouth. She ought to get a sense of time, she ought to drink plenty water, and she ought to seek out food.

She stays in bed for now.

She would rather not, she would rather shy away, but she knows that before she faces Hannibal and Will again, she needs to face what had happened yesterday.

It had been ugly, and it had been humiliating.

Her second attempt at escaping had been as dismal a failure as her first. Sure, she had gotten further away, but it had been as doomed as the first one, and the repercussions much worse. The feelings of failure compounded by the fact that Hannibal and Will had allowed her to run. She acknowledges to herself that she doesn't yet know all of their reasons for doing so, but she suspects curiosity is near the top. Manipulation surely somewhere just above or below curiosity.

She takes some jagged comfort in the fact that she can at least see that much. She isn't yet so far gone that her eyes and mind have become entirely clouded to their motives.

But, she thinks grimly, there can be no doubt that she is rather far gone. Too far, some might say, to turn back.

Last night she had peeled away strips of her own skin. She had fashioned them into an intricate, bloody tapestry, and she had allowed Hannibal to read her like tea leaves.

Of course, it could be worse, she thinks with the bleakest of gallow's humour. The stripping away of her skin had only happened figuratively. Mason Verger had been less lucky.

And she cannot deny that along with the humiliation she is also feeling…lighter, for what she shared with Hannibal last night. For what Hannibal took from her last night. It would seem he cut a lot of hurt and anger and ugliness out of her with his linoleum knife.

It doesn't take away the repugnance of violation, but it does make it easier to swallow.

And then there is Will…what she had shared with Will.

Hannibal had, quite expertly and nimbly, persuaded her to turn herself inside out. He had seen her expose her insides to his gaze. And he had feasted, had Hannibal, on all her hurt and trauma.

And Will had made her swear a vow. Just a simple vow.

Time will tell which one of them will cause the worst damage.

Or the least. And that is how she should approach this, she thinks: with a view of surviving almost whole. That would be the best case scenario.

And the worst…the worst isn't a situation in which she ends up on Hannibal's table.

She knows it isn't. Just as she knows she can't hide up here. She needs to move forward. Things changed last night and she needs to find out precisely how, and then she needs to adapt. She needs to…resign herself. Is that what she needs to do? Resign herself to this? Is survival really more important than agency and freedom?

She snorts at the ceiling. Of course it fucking is. Anything else is just lofty bullshit ideals that wouldn't float for a second in a true life or death situation.

Which is what this is.

She stands with some difficulty, and opens the door that Hannibal, despite her latest stunt, left unlocked last night. Perhaps in mockery, perhaps just to see. She squints at the bank of casement windows across the hallway. It is dark outside, but with a hint of grey. So it's morning. Hannibal will probably be preparing breakfast downstairs, and she really ought to eat.

But more than food and water she wants…she wants…

…she wants Will, she realises with something that isn't quite surprise, but perhaps, yes, fucking resignation. She wants the kindness warring with dusky danger in his eyes, she wants his slow thoughtful movements, she wants his steady breaths. She remembers his heart beating against hers, and she wants that too, maybe.

That, more than hunger and thirst, is what gets her moving, what sees her washing her face and carding her fingers through her hair and then making for the stairs. She can bathe and change into fresh clothes later, right now it seems more important to see Will.

As she had guessed, there are homely noises coming from the kitchen. There is the smell of coffee, of bread, of bacon.

She sticks her head into the large, modern space, but doesn't enter. She isn't yet ready to be in the same kitchen as Hannibal Lecter.

"Good morning," she says, and then, remembering what he had told her last night, she adds: "...Hannibal."

He nods at her, and turns some bacon in the frying pan. She hopes it's from an actual pig.

"Ah, Clarice," he says. "Good morning. Please sit, breakfast will be ready momentarily."

She nods and returns to the dining room. She sits down just as he comes through balancing plates, and he catches her wince as her raw belly brushes against the table cloth. She is getting better and better at reading the microscopic cues on his face, and she knows that he is not at all contrite over the injury he caused her. Quite the opposite: she sees satisfaction in the one infinitesimally upturned corner of his mouth, and she reads fond reminiscence in his heavy eyelids as he watches how she sits very straight on the chair so her abdomen won't touch the edge of the table.

"I want to clean your wound after breakfast. We must ensure it doesn't get infected."

She spreads the starched white linen napkin over her lap and shivers.

"Yes, of course."

She doesn't tell him that she can do it herself, because she knows that he wants the opportunity to admire his own handiwork.

Hannibal plates up while she sips on some orange juice, then he sits down and, with a polite nod at her, begins to eat. She looks around whilst picking up her knife and fork. She's confused. Hannibal, such a stickler for etiquette.

"Where is Will?"

Hannibal chews and swallows and delicately wipes his mouth with a napkin before answering.

"Will had to go away for a few days."

She doesn't like how that makes her feel. She doesn't like it at all. And in the confused emotional jumble of "why?" and "where?" her first question is:

"Did you not want to go with him?"

"Very much so, Clarice, but I am afraid that this time it simply wasn't possible."

She knows, of course, why that is.

"Sorry to be an inconvenience."

"Not at all," he says lightly. "It is my pleasure to remain here with you."

It is, she suspects, not her pleasure at all.

"Of course," she says. Then: "Was it not hard for Will to leave with all this snow?"

It's rare that she sees blatant amusement on Hannibal's placid face, but she sees it now, brought forth, no doubt, by her unapologetic fishing.

"Some roads have been ploughed, and Will has the means," is all he says though, and is quite kind enough to refrain from following up with: unlike you, Clarice.

She hears it loud and clear though.

Hannibal goes back to eating his bacon and egg and croissant with hearty enthusiasm. Suddenly lacking appetite despite having been ravenous only five minutes ago, she nibbles on a piece of toast.

Her thoughts are snarled and confused, and Hannibal stays mercifully silent as she attempts to make sense of them.

There is, of course, unease over being all alone with Hannibal in desolate, remote surroundings.

But worse than that is the fact that Will just… left.

He hunted her down and saved her life, slept with her in his arms, made her swear him a vow that saw her letting Hannibal eat all her corner stones and building blocks. Will made her need him. Then he left.

She stands so abruptly that her chair almost falls over backwards. She manages to keep her voice polite when she addresses Hannibal though.

"Excuse me. I'm afraid I'm not very hungry."

Hannibal stays quiet and allows her to leave the room.

"Will you join me for a walk, Clarice? Will's beasts must be exercised."

Accompanied by the dogs she has haunted the second and third floor, drifting between her room and Will's nook and the hallways and stairs in between, stubbornly refusing to interact with Hannibal. And it's not even fear that is causing her to avoid him, at least not completely. Rather it is…things she doesn't want to look at.

Now he appears to have decided to remedy that, standing framed by the doorway to Will's nook, holding a tray. Seeing him feels disorienting for some reason. Then it occurs to her that, unless he has been accompanying her, she has only ever seen him downstairs. Kitchen, drawing room, dining room, the grand hall. She doesn't know where he sleeps. Thinking of that inexplicably makes her think of sitting snuggled on his lap last night, feeling safe and tender and terrified, and her face burns hot and tight.

Even so, there is absolutely no way she will turn down the chance of a sanctioned visit outside.

"I would love to."

He nods, once.

"Then it will be so. First, however, you must eat. And there is your wound to see to." He takes a step into the room and she sees now that there is a small first aid kit sitting next to a sandwich on the tray. "I didn't get the opportunity after breakfast." There is mild reproach in his voice but she can clearly hear the sharpened dagger's edge underneath. "Lift your shirt up for me, please."

She wants to refuse, but one look at his face tells her this is not an option. For whatever reason he is determined to look after her. She daren't speculate why.

She sits down on the chair that Will usually occupies when in here. It feels safer. Without a word she rolls up the hem of her top. Hannibal walks across the floor and puts the tray down on a side table. He sinks into a crouch before her, graceful and fluid and entirely in such a way that she knows he would have his teeth in her neck within seconds should she make a false move.

It feels unnatural. What prey would willingly bare its neck, or the soft, vulnerable flesh of its belly, to a predator? Yet that is what she is doing, and it goes against every instinct that is keeping her wound tight, ready for flight even though there is nowhere to fly.

She could almost wish for the dissociative state she'd been in last night.

"Eat, Clarice," he says, and without a word she picks up the sandwich, holds it with one hand and her shirt with the other. She takes a bite, and Hannibal on his knees in front of her, making a stance that may seem subservient instead look coiled and dangerous. It is not at all lost on her that they are mirroring the positions they were in when he first caused her the injury he is now tending. Only this time she is eating the best BLT she's ever had.

Carefully he soaks some cotton in disinfectant, then sweeps it along the elegant letters he carved into her skin. She is faintly proud of herself for managing not to twitch, or hiss, or swear profusely, even though the sting of the raw wound hurts like acid. She doesn't look at it. In the files back at Quantico she read about how carefully and tenderly he had gutted Will, and she is in no doubt that the cuts he has given her will not fester and infect, but rather will heal into a beautiful silver tattoo just as he had intended.

No, her attention is stolen by his demeanour.

He seems to be careful not to touch her more than necessary. It feels a stark contrast to how he has behaved since the eve of her first escape attempt. That's when he became tactile and imposing, seemingly determined to get her used to his touch the way one would a skittish animal: by persistent exposure.

And she has grown used to it. Enough that she is now thrown by his distance.

Just as she is feeling abandoned by Will, she is now also feeling unease that Hannibal won't touch her like he used to. Had she been alone, she thinks, she would have laughed hysterically and torn at her hair. As it is, she sits quietly and holds her top up, allowing Hannibal to clean her wound with brisk efficiency while she tears bite after bite out of her sandwich.

Fuck.

"There," he says. "All done."

She lets her top fall down again just as Hannibal puts two fingers on her chin and tips her head back. He swipes the cotton across the nick on her throat just as she gulps down the last morsel of food. His fingers move with her swallow.

Then he takes his hands off her, and she stands as he does. He takes a step back where he normally wouldn't, and creates a polite distance. She tries to hide a frown by looking down at her bare feet.

"May I have some socks and shoes if we are going outside?"

Hannibal's mouth twitches, but his voice is even as he answers.

"Of course. And no doubt there will be outerwear to borrow." Politely he refrains from pointing out that she already availed herself of that opportunity the other night.

She calls the dogs, and together they head down the stairs, her steps quick and keen, Hannibal with the same smooth purpose as always. In the mud room he opens a cupboard she hadn't even noticed before. In there hangs a thick ladies parka, and on the floor stands a pair of fur lined boots that look to be her size. Both are new, with tags on. Quite clearly meant for her.

"So you did intend for me to see the outside," she says as she pulls on first the boots, then the coat, the dogs making both tasks difficult as they mill around her feet, bodies vibrating with excitement.

Hannibal only nods, then hands her gloves and a hat and a scarf.

"Wrap up well."

She obeys as he pulls on his own coat and his ushanka, somehow managing not to look ridiculous in it.

Then he opens the door she escaped out of just the other night, and beckons her ahead of him.

She's so eager. So very excited to look around that she forgets for a moment how exhausted and weak she is feeling.

It snows, but it is gentle, fat snowflakes somersaulting in slow motion. The wind too is a mere breeze, playful and soft, ruffling her hair and painting her cheeks. The light is poor, even though it must be close to midday. She's grateful to have it though - she thinks it can't have been long ago this place was held in the eternal darkness of an arctic winter.

It might not seem that way at this moment, but spring is approaching this faraway place. And along with spring might come opportunity.

Hannibal takes her towards the back of the great house, The dogs run ahead, and she smiles despite herself. The simple happiness of their wagging tails and lolling tongues as they face-dive into the snow soothes her. They run in among spruce and pine and fir, Clarice and Hannibal following at a slower pace. It's even more quiet in here, among the trees, and darker too, everything held in a perpetual frigid dusk. She thinks of the woods behind Will's Wolf Trap home, where everything began. These woods seem deeper, more impenetrable, and the incline is very steep. She is grateful that her instincts led her right the other night, led her around to the front of the house and onwards. Had she ran this way Will might not have found her.

Hannibal stays close to her, but doesn't touch, and it's making her skin crawl.

"Tell me about her," she says, and it's part genuine curiosity, part a need for a reaction. "Tell me about Mischa."

Hannibal stops, and turns to her, and as she mirrors him she is concerned that she has angered him. Unleashed him.

A thrill of adrenaline shoots through her.

But his face is calm in the twilight of the woods, and his gaze steady. He doesn't look at her though, not quite, he looks off very slightly to the left, somewhere beyond her shoulder. His voice is very deliberate, very sober, but his face is almost gentle. Far in the distance behind him the stag walks among the trees, so black as to be almost inky blue against the soft shadows.

But she focuses on Hannibal, letting the beast wander on for now.

"She was very brave and very stubborn. She loved summer and butterflies. If the cook made kūčiukai she would sneak down into the kitchen and steal some. She disliked having her hair brushed, and she hated being cold. She had a sweet laugh. She was terrified of being abandoned. She used to hold my hand."

His focus shifts back to her then, and she suddenly can't move and can't breathe in the face of the abysm she sees in him.

"But she didn't make me."

Then he begins walking back, towards the vague light where the forest opens to the great house. Before she follows him she turns around and looks behind her.

There stands a little girl with snarled hair and a bloodied cheek, fading away into the shadows as Clarice watches.

She sighs and goes to catch up with Hannibal. They walk quietly back to the house together, the dogs running all around them.

"Thank you," she tells him seriously and sincerely, "for letting me come outside."

"It was my pleasure, Clarice."

Three days go by.

She is proud of herself for correctly interpreting the code of time, for knowing morning from afternoon, night from day. It is the first time since she arrived here that she feels in control of how seconds and minutes and hours work.

She is helped along by Hannibal, and the routines he implements.

They eat breakfast together, and then, when the day is at its lightest, they walk the dogs. She appreciates being outdoors more than she can say. Then lunch, after which Hannibal insists they stick to their sessions in the drawing room. And she thinks why not, it will pass the times until Will returns.

She hopes it is soon.

Dinner always at eight, and it's always delicious, and she always leaves the table feeling full with confusion and a longing for something she can't define.

The rest of the time she is left to her own devices, Hannibal busy in one of the many rooms she is not permitted to go. She obeys her instructions and sticks to the second and third floors. There are many locked doors, but there is still enough space for her to pace and fret, sometimes read, sometimes look out of the windows for long stretches of time, falling into the muted winter colours of the landscape. She holds her arms up to the weak daylight, ensuring she is not becoming transparent, and she might draw little paintings in the frosty condensation on the glass.

Sometimes, when she is feeling unbearably wretched and anxious, she will sit in Will's bedroom. A small, comfortable space, seemingly furnished with odds and ends and rejects, and she feels sure that is entirely Will's choice. The door is not locked, so she tells herself that it's ok that she comes here. In fact, the door has been left ajar, allowing the dogs entrance. This is where they sleep when not shut away in the mud room during meal times, and this is where she sits when her mind grows too loud. On the floor with her back against his bed, trying not to think.

She lifts her head, listens. Hannibal calls her now.

Dinner is served.

They are in the drawing room, and it's the fourth day.

She is sure it is the fourth day. That's nice, she thinks, to be so sure.

She is becoming more and more antsy, impatient, reckless. She feels empty and out of sorts without Will in the house, and with Hannibal using tactics she is unfamiliar with.

She feels lost. More lost.

Just as she has been leaning on Will's breaths, so too she has begun to use the feel of Hannibal's leg against hers as an anchor during their sessions. Without it, her words come loose and tumbling from her mouth without any care. It is dangerous.

She wonders what she has done wrong.

"I want to know why I am here," she mutters, and Hannibal stops scribbling on his pad. It's a stupid fucking thing to be doing anyway, she thinks. As if he's keeping a journal on her while a fugitive.

"Here, with me, right now?"

"Here, in this house. You didn't just bring me here out of self-preservation."

"Not really, no. Pure self-preservation would have meant killing you in order to properly eliminate the threat you posed."

She doesn't miss his use of past tense, and she is offended even as she is forced to once again acknowledge that he is also right. She is absolutely no threat to either of them. He had seen to it that night in the dining room. And Will…she thinks Will might have seen to it too.

"I am also sure that you remember what I said," he carries on. "That there are reasons you were brought here, but you aren't yet ready to hear them. That still stands. You shouldn't attempt to pry, Clarice. It's not very nice."

She hears clearly what he's not saying. Do you really think you can manipulate me, Clarice? Trip me up?

"I'm sorry," she says. "But things seem to be standing still. Go nowhere. Actually, go backwards. I don't understand my place here. If there is a place for me here."

He sits forward at that, suddenly rapt and keen, as if she just said something he has been waiting for.

"You have begun to ponder your space, and you are growing restive."

"I am," she says, and she can hear the frustration and yes, even anger in her own voice.

He nods, and he looks pleased. She wants to know why but knows he is very unlikely to tell her.

Damn him.

"I meant what I said the other night, Clarice. Will and I, we are offering you a place to belong. A home. But it takes time to create new spaces in different worlds. Room must be made, pieces must come together. You must be patient."

"Why would I want that?" she asks. "A home? I had a home. You took me away from it."

He shakes his head, just a little.

"If you truly had a home, would you have come looking for us? You had already begun the process of leaving this "home" of your own volition. We simply helped you along."

He sits back in his chair again, and why does she miss the tension?

"All your life you have been looking to replace what you have lost. You, dirt poor girl without a family, desperate to belong. To prove yourself, be better than your background. You merged your identity with the FBI's to honour your fallen father. An institution that has treated you with nothing less than contempt. You have searched everywhere for father figures. Look at your relationship with Jack Crawford. Do you believe it a coincidence that it was his death that precipitated all this?"

She, frustrated with not being able to read him, she challenges:

"Is that what you offer, Hannibal? To become my father figure?"

She regrets her lip just as soon as the words have rolled off her tongue.

His eyes flash. Just for second the aloof placidness which she has grown to despise is gone. In its place… avarice. Infernal, roaring hunger.

"Is that what you want, Clarice?"

His voice is low, rough, his stance in the chair terrifyingly still. Her entire body tingles with it, and she shifts restlessly. The movement brings her leg in contact with his. It burns, and she leaves it there.

"I..I don't…What do you…"

Hannibal's face stills while her words fade away, but he says nothing. He crosses his legs, losing the contact between them. She feels cold.

They sit looking at each other for a while, Hannibal perfectly still, her itching for movement or words or something, anything, just…

"Have I done something to offend you?" she blurts out.

The words feel hideous and cumbersome in the silence, stretching it out so taut and see-through before ripping it in two. Too late it occurs to her that Hannibal has engineered it thus, sitting silently and giving her ample opportunity to expose herself.

"No. You have not." Then he changes the subject, leaving her struggling to catch up. "You have been worried and out of sorts these past few days. It is Will's absence, isn't it, that has upset you."

"Yes," she says, without artifice, but doesn't mention that it's not just Will's absence making her feel this way. "I…I feel…."

"You feel abandoned."

"I do, and I don't understand why. This is not a situation where feelings like that have a place, is it?"

"You have been traumatised, and a person…"

"So you agree my situation is traumatic?" she interrupts.

The look he gives her for her rudeness would freeze the blood in her veins if she wasn't quite used to it by now. But his voice gives no hint of emotion as he answers her.

"Of course it's traumatic. Have we ever claimed otherwise?"

She opens her mouth to answer, then realises that she doesn't remember if they have or not. He carries on regardless.

"A person finding themselves in a traumatic situation might start believing that the only thing that could protect them is the most dangerous thing they can find, if it can be convinced to forge a connection."

"Is that what you think I am doing?" she asks. "Trying to endear myself to you?"

"I was not thinking of myself."

She cocks her head as she tries to pinpoint his meaning.

"Will? You mean Will? He is not the most dangerous thing here."

"Isn't he?"

"That's preposterous!" she exclaims and takes in his entire terrifying visage with a gesture he no doubt considers exceedingly rude.

Hannibal smiles.

"You are blinder than I had thought."

The front door opens and shuts out in the hallway. Paws come scrabbling down the stairs, accompanied by excited yips and barks.

Will is back.

Before she can really think about it she shoots from the chair and out of the drawing room. Hannibal is behind her, his long legs keeping pace even though he walks where she runs. When she turns to look at him there is a smile on his face, very slight, and his eyes are as warm as she has ever seen them.

Will stands right inside the door, setting a hold-all on the floor, crowded by the dogs. She is pleased to see him, she realises. The balance of this house has been askew without him, he is needed here.

Her steps slow though, as she gets closer to him. Then she stops entirely. He looks… sated. Heavy lidded, lazy movements, at ease. Relaxed. Like…like he's just been fucking. She dismisses the notion immediately, on sure instinct, because it doesn't feel right, because it's something else, it's…

Unnerved and shaken and reaching reaching reaching for an answer she takes a step back, into Hannibal. Her front to his back, his chin on her crown. Something inside her shifts out of place and then back into a different one when his hand lands on her hip.

"You've been killing," she blurts to Will just as soon as the conviction takes hold of her, no filter, no hesitation.

"Yes," says Will immediately. Behind her Hannibal hums, and she gets the sense that he is pleased with them both.

"Welcome home, Will," he says.