Author's note: This chapter was delayed by work considerations. Basically, they moved me to another project and decided prior notice was not REALLY necessary for me. So I've been off the computer at work, which is where I was able to do most of my writing.

The night was quiet after the Jeep had departed. For several minute, neither woman spoke. Clarice's eyes narrowed into slits. Dr. Lander seemed bizarrely calm. Perhaps she knew what she had done and knew that it was fair for her to die. She did not speak or try to run. She simply stood with her eyes closed and her hands behind her back.

Clarice swallowed. Time to do what was necessary. But her gun seemed to be heavier than normal. It was hard to lift up and deploy. She thought about Paul, dear sweet Paul lying on the floor choking in his own blood, and it became easier to do. A tightness stirred Clarice Starling's chest as she pressed the muzzle between Erin Lander's eyes.

"Any last words?" Clarice asked roughly.

Erin shook her head calmly. "I've said them," she said. She seemed completely serene and at peace. Clarice wondered why. She'd killed Paul D'angelo, she ought to be at least upset.

"Kind of stupid, you know," Clarice said. "Dying for car keys."

Erin smiled a small, lost smile and shook her head. "It's not that, Agent Starling. You wouldn't understand."

For some reason, that bothered Clarice in an old place. Clarice Starling's life had been a relentless march to the better side of the tracks. Yet every time she saw someone from more money, there had always been that slight resentment. That look that said You are below me. She gave away very little in drive, education, and skills, and on those measures Clarice often came out better. But the class thing was always there, every time she met someone whose daddy had paid their way through the Ivy League, and she knew it.

That wasn't quite it. Erin Lander came from no more of a privileged background than Clarice herself, from what Clarice knew of her. But she clearly thought Starling lower than her somehow, incapable of understanding her reasons. Even now, as Clarice prepared to punish her for what she had done, she stared at Clarice with a sad, serene little smile on her face.

From Clarice's jacket pocket came an insistent electronic burr. Clarice's face twisted. She reached into her pocket and removed the cell phone. Still keeping the gun on Erin, she pressed TALK and put it to her ear.

"Hello, Clarice," came a familiar metallic rasp. "I apologize for making you wait this long, but it's simply dreadful to try and get a connection out this far."

Clarice sucked in sharply. "Dr. Lecter," she said tightly, with faux friendliness. "It's good to hear your voice. Where are you?" Upon hearing his name, Erin's eyes lit up, but she did not move. The muzzle of the gun remained firmly seated between her eyes.

"I'm where I can see you," he answered blithely. "And Clarice, I would like to talk to you about that for a moment."

For just a moment Clarice felt shamefaced, a schoolgirl caught by her teacher doing something naughty. She shook that off.

"Well, it seems your little friend killed Paul D'angelo," she said. "If you're watching, then enjoy. You ought to like this, Dr. Lecter."

"Ah Clarice," Dr. Lecter mused, "before, you told me you would never ask me to stop. But I'll ask you to. Or at least hold for five minutes."

Clarice smiled tightly. "Then give yourself up, doctor," she grinned.

"I'm afraid that's not an option," Dr. Lecter said. "But pray tell me, Clarice, would you be willing to hear me out? Have you enough charity in your heart to allow her to draw breath for another three hundred seconds? Or has your career ordeal burnt that from you?"

Clarice was nettled. Then again, Dr. Lecter was very good at that. "Do you think I won't do it, doctor?" Clarice said into the phone, her eyes staring hard at nothing. She tried to look along the hillside for the squat shape of Dr. Lecter's stolen Jeep.

"Oh, no, Clarice. I know well that you have killed, and killed before."

"That's right," she affirmed. "I have."

"You've killed even when not under a fog of emotion, as I suspect you are now. Calm and cool-headed as you pulled the trigger." His voice seemed vaguely sarcastic, as if the idea of being calm and collected when you made the decision to take another life was silly. Clarice Starling, who had on more than one occasion made the calm, cool-headed decision to take a human life, didn't think it was.

"I suppose so," she said, and plunged on ahead. "What kind of game is this, Dr. Lecter? I assume you don't want me to kill her. So what are you calling me a cold-blooded killer for?"

"Did I use those words? You did, Clarice. Or is that how you see yourself?" He chuckled. "Cold-blooded killer? That would be uncharitable…but not inaccurate."

"Then I guess you won't mind if I do it now," Clarice said, her twang growing stronger as her emotions rose. Erin closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath.

"Clarice, let me ask you this first. What single unifying characteristic binds those you have killed?"

She was growing tired of this. But fine, she would play his little game if he wanted her to.

"They were criminals," she snapped. "Murderers. Like Dr. Lander."

"No. That is open to interpretation, Clarice. Something simpler, something more basic. Something that they were at the time you killed them."

Clarice was oddly disappointed. Her mind whirled back to the night at the Tenneseee courthouse. No. That is incidental. She felt the same sense of disappointment now as then, a star pupil letting down a brilliant teacher.

"They were going to kill me," she said. "Or someone else."

"Exactly, Clarice. They were armed." He let out a sigh. "You faced them on the field of battle, as a warrior. You are a warrior, Clarice, I have never doubted that. Are you an executioner as well? Coldly preparing to kill your helpless victim?"

Clarice let out a shuddering sigh.

"I once asked you also if they would give you a medal. Do you think they'll give you a medal for shooting Dr. Lander?"

Time to quit playing his goddam game. Clarice tensed. "It doesn't matter," she snapped.

"You needed no medal to remind you of your courage and incorruptibility, just a mirror," Dr. Lecter continued. He sounded almost sarcastic. "Do you feel courageous and incorruptible now?"

Clarice closed her eyes. "No," she admitted in a defeated whisper.

"I would like you to do three simple things for me, before you kill Dr. Lander in cold blood," Dr. Lecter said. He was calm and unbothered. "The first thing, Clarice. Turn and look into the foyer of the house. There's a mirror there, so that you can check your appearance as you come in." His tone seemed almost pedantic. Clarice turned and saw the mirror, right where he had said. It was on the far wall, and she could see her own reflection.

"Look into the mirror, Clarice. Do you see the brave and incorruptible warrior you yearn to be?"

Clarice studied her reflection in the mirror. She saw the harpyish expression on her face, the cruel line of her own mouth. The bitter cast of her blue eyes. Overall, it was a face of loss, pain and hate. She could barely recognize it as her own.

"No," she whispered powerlessly, and suddenly the .45 seemed to weigh fifty pounds. She dropped it from Erin's face and pointed it at the ground.

"Do you like what you see, Clarice? Be honest."

"No," she admitted again. She could feel her rage ebbing from her, and she wanted desperately to keep it lest she face what she had done.

"Now, I always looked into the faces of my victims as I prepared to kill them," Dr. Lecter said as one killer to another. "Look into her face before you put a bullet through it, will you?"

"She killed Paul," Clarice hissed, grasping the source of her rage before it slipped away from her. Thinking of Paul reminded her of why she was doing this.

"Did she? How do you know that?" He still seemed to be enjoying this.

"She was leaning over him," Clarice said in a weak snarl.

"Ah yes. Tell me, Clarice, though. Do you see the mark of his blood upon her? Is the mark of Cain upon her face?"

Clarice Starling looked into Erin Lander's face. Erin did not meet her gaze. Clarice bit her lips and felt suddenly ill.

"You know that I never lie, Clarice, but I won't tell you I did it, as you'd just say I was lying," Dr. Lecter said. "But before you judge her and execute sentence, tell me. Is the blood of the innocent upon her?" His voice changed tone, becoming mocking and jocular. "Isn't that how they put it in the Bible, Clarice? The blood of the innocent is upon thee, or some such foolishness?"

Clarice's eyes swept over Erin's face and front. She began to pant. There wasn't any blood that she could see.. Not on her face, not on her shirt. Goddam him. For her part, Erin simply submitted to the inspection wordlessly, lost in her own thoughts. There wasn't any blood. And that had to mean –

No. Goddam it, she did it. She had to have done it. Otherwise that makes me –

She grabbed Erin and spun her around. As her eyes cast down at Erin's handcuffed wrists, she smiled victoriously.

"Why, Dr. Lecter, I'm afraid the answer is yes," Clarice said. "There's blood on her hands."

"On her hands." Dr. Lecter seemed to take the news quite calmly.

"Means I got you there, don't I, Doctor?" she said, her mouth grinning but her eyes hard.

"How about your own hands, Clarice?" Dr. Lecter asked. "Are your own hands stained with Paul D'angelo's blood?"

Clarice let out a choked, shocked noise. "Dr. Lecter, I did not kill him myself."

"I'm not asking metaphorically, Clarice," Dr. Lecter said.

Slowly and unwillingly, Clarice Starling turned her gun hand up. At first she saw nothing and grinned. Then, there it was. On her trigger finger was a red stain of Paul D'angelo's blood. She grimaced when she saw it.

"Well, Clarice?"

"Yes," she said finally, "there's blood on my hand too."

"How did it get there, do you think?" Dr. Lecter asked conversationally, as if he was an instructor at the FBI academy. "Did you mark yourself in Paul's blood as he died? A little ritual of revenge, vowing to slay his slayer?"

"No," Clarice snapped. "Goddam you. I got it trying to help him. From when I tried to help him."

Then the reality of what she had just said hit home to her, and her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Dr. Lecter showed a moment of rare magnanimity and did not say anything for several moments. But she could sense his self-satisfaction in the smug silence he allowed her.

"You've done two of the things I asked," Dr. Lecter said. "Now for the third, Clarice. I want you to think for a moment of the lambs. The screaming of the lambs that has driven you almost all of your life."

That was easy enough for Clarice Starling to do, and as she heard those horrible screams in her mind she shuddered.

Dr. Lecter took the opportunity to exercise his pedantic side. Even over the scratchy static of the cell-phone connection, his words were clear. They dug into Clarice Starling's soul with the ease of a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon.

"Clarice, you're puzzled and angry right now, and you're looking for someone to pay the price of your fury. But if you do, you'll join yourself to the likes of Jame Gumb, who was also puzzled and angry."

Tears welled behind Clarice Starling's closed eyes. Dr. Lecter continued.

"Clarice, if you pull that trigger now, you'll be pulling it again in the future, but it won't be Dr. Lander or myself at the end of the muzzle. Can't you see, Clarice? If you do this, you'll regret it for the rest of your life, and it won't be that long. I won't need to kill you for it, Clarice, you'll beat me to it long before I could ever get to you. You ache for the lambs, Clarice. You always have, it's what drives you. Don't you know what will happen if you kill one yourself? They'll never stop screaming for you then. Never. No matter what you do, you'll never earn the silence of the lambs again."

Clarice gave up any hope of dignity then and burst into tears, great racking sobs that forced her to lean over and grasp the porch railing for support. Behind Dr. Lecter's voice, which was saying something she couldn't hope to understand, the screaming of the lambs burst into full voice.

"There you have it, Clarice," he said calmly. "If you still want to kill Dr. Lander…you may."

Clarice could no more have formed an answer than she could have grown wings and flown. She flung the cell phone away. Her arm jerked out in front of her as if warding away demons. The cell phone described a high arc, a black blob against the moonlight, and landed somewhere in the grass. She looked down at her gun as she bawled and suddenly it seemed unimaginably dirty to her, an oily black thing of evil, and she threw that over the porch too. She heard it thud heavily against the earth and trembled.

Clarice Starling ran for the far railing of the porch and leaned over it. Her stomach churned. She vomited into the azaleas on the side of Dr. Lecter's rented home. Frantically, she rubbed her hands on her pants, disgusted with herself and what she had almost done. She felt sick and angry and dirty. Vaguely, she wondered if either the gun or the phone was under her. Then she decided that she did not care.

In college, Clarice had read Macbeth as part of her English requirements. At the time, she'd considered Shakespeare pretentious bullshit, the sort of thing that rich kids spent way too much time on. Now, she dimly remembered it through her self-disgust and horror and decided that she knew how Lady Macbeth must have felt at the end, scrubbing and scrubbing her hands. She looked at her hands and shivered.

She turned around and saw Erin Lander looking at her curiously. She seemed neither angry nor sympathetic. She said nothing to Clarice. Clarice opened her mouth and then closed it again. What should you say to someone you were about to kill? Sorry seemed so inadequate as to be laughable.

"Turn around," Clarice whispered, and reached into her pocket for her handcuff key. When Erin complied, she unlocked the cuffs. Clarice preferred it this way. She did not need to meet the other woman's eyes. Oddly enough, Erin seemed to be ashamed herself somehow, as if she had been the one wronging instead of being wronged. When the cuffs fell from her wrists, Clarice let them fall on the floor of the porch. She didn't want to touch those, either.

"Get out of here. G'wan, now," Clarice said, studiously studying the floor. Dr. Erin Lander fled back into the house. Vaguely, Clarice wondered what she would do now: the car had two flat tires and she didn't know where her cell phone was anymore. Asking for a ride didn't seem an option.

A few minutes later, Erin Lander appeared in the doorway again, her purse slung over her shoulder. Dimly, Clarice wondered where she had hidden it. It seemed so unimportant now. The two women's eyes met. Warrior and healer, one Dr. Lecter's hunter, the other his shelterer.

"You all right?" Erin Lander asked Clarice.

Clarice nodded.

"I don't hate you, Starling," Erin said, and headed across the porch to the driveway. "But I couldn't let you take him." Clarice shuddered as she heard the engine start. Crushed rock squirted under the Civic's tires as Erin backed down the road. Clarice wondered what she should have said. Nothing seemed right. She watched the Civic's taillights grow smaller and disappear.

Clarice Starling sat for perhaps twenty minutes on the porch in the dark Ohio night. She rocked on her heels gently. Her thoughts were coming quicker now, more calmly. As she realized how she had almost betrayed everything she held most dear, she trembled, but the trauma was fading.

"Hello, Clarice."

There was no mistaking that voice. Clarice stood up and looked to and fro. The lights did not make it far from the house before being swallowed up by the rural night. Then she saw him, a silhouette in the driveway masked by his fedora and coat. Clarice stood, eyes wide, as she realized she hadn't heard him sneak up on her. On a crushed-rock driveway. She was losing her touch.

"Dr. Lecter?"

"Don't think of trying to arrest me," he advised. "I know you don't have your gun and I won't let you get close enough." He chuckled sardonically. "And this time I do have my own key." Then his voice changed tone entirely, becoming concerned. His tone seemed a bit strained. "I also had to see that you were all right."

"I…I am," she said, her eyes casting back and forth in the darkness. Where had she dropped the damn gun, anyway? Or the cell phone? "What was all that about anyway?"

"You needed the same thing as she did, Clarice. You needed to be reminded of your better nature."

"Are you going to…I thought you…is she in love with you?" Clarice husked.

"I suppose. Don't bother looking for me around her, I'll explain it to her privately. You'll be watching, Clarice. It's what you do."

"I'll do more than watch, Dr. Lecter," Clarice said, completing a sentence for the first time in the conversation. Her eyes narrowed.

"I suppose so," Dr. Lecter said, unruffled. "I took the liberty of unloading your weapon, Clarice, as well as removing the battery from your cell phone. You looked so peaceful on my porch I hadn't the heart to disturb you. You may find them both on the other side of the house. Your car keys are there as well." He turned to leave.

"Wait," Clarice said breathlessly.

Dr. Lecter turned back to her and cocked an eyebrow.

There were a thousand questions Clarice meant to ask, and she knew she would only have time for one. It popped out of her mouth before she even knew she had spoken.

"Do you love her?" she asked, and felt like a complete idiot.

Dr. Lecter chuckled. "Yes," he said. "As I do you, Clarice."

Clarice put her hand on the porch railing and stared at him blankly. Dr. Lecter could see the maelstrom behind her eyes. Anger, fear, joy…requited love?

"You and her are just alike, in so many ways," Dr. Lecter said. "Unfortunately, I can't stay with either of you. You're a hunter, Clarice, a warrior. And she…she is not yet ready. I'll wait until she's more able to travel, as well as when you're not looking, Clarice." He chuckled.

"Dr. Lecter?" Clarice quavered, staring at him. He watched her carefully. He knew that he had to leave quickly. Better to say his piece and get out while emotional shock held her in its grip.

"Yes, Clarice, I do care for you," he said. "I always have. Remember your better nature, Clarice. It's what enables you to be what you are."

Then he turned and headed back towards the treeline, his shoes silent on the grass. The night swallowed him up and he was gone.

Clarice Starling sat down on the porch and shivered once, a soft smile coming over her lips.