Author's note: A sunset ending, a few people have asked? Well, here's as close as I get.
The first thing she noticed was the twittering of birds. Tweet tweet tweet, outside her window. Her stomach hurt. Her later memories of that time were broken shards. Light coming in the window. The birds, again. The sting of a needle. A calm voice talking to her. A sweet, spicy beverage she rather enjoyed. In between them all, flashes of black.
Clarice Starling finally awoke to look around her room. It was quite large. The walls were painted pristine white. A large window let in sunlight on one side of the room. It was daytime, and she blinked owlishly at the light. There was a large oak desk in the corner of the bedroom. There was Dr. Hannibal Lecter seated in its chair.
She wet her lips and eyed him carefully.
"Good afternoon, Clarice," Dr. Lecter said courteously.
"Good afternoon, Dr. Lecter," Clarice echoed. She glanced down at herself and discovered she was wearing silk pajamas. Had he changed her? It seemed he had. She flushed red for a moment at the thought. "What am I…how long have I been here?"
"Not terribly long," Dr. Lecter assured her. He grinned. "I'm afraid I had to do some work on you. Mr. McCracken wasn't much of a surgeon, you see."
McCracken. Charlene. "Where's Charlene?" she asked immediately.
Dr. Lecter shrugged. "She was treated and held overnight, from what I understand," he said. "She's since been released from the hospital."
"I want to see her," Clarice said.
Dr. Lecter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said mildly. "You're not ready to get out of bed yet, I don't think. Mr. McCracken opened up your abdominal wall. What you need, Clarice, is a heavy dose of antibiotics and rest."
Clarice stared at Dr. Lecter like an unarmed gunslinger. "Dr. Lecter…I can do that in the hospital," she said.
Dr. Lecter sighed. "I suppose," he said. "I don't think you'd want to, though."
Clarice frowned at him. "Why not?" she asked. "What's wrong with the hospital?"
"Well," Dr. Lecter allowed, "I don't care for them at all. And especially the hospitals here. Not up to scratch."
Clarice Starling swallowed nervously. He seemed quite calm and relaxed. Then again, the man had seemed calm and relaxed when the police searched his basement. She thought of the photos and shivered.
"Dr. Lecter, look," she said. "If I've been hurt that bad, I think I ought to go to the hospital. At least get checked out. Are you telling me I can't?"
Dr. Lecter chuckled. "Ah, yes. That's right, you still think you're back in the United States. Your faith in the establishment – medical or otherwise – remains as strong as ever. But to answer your question, Clarice, you're correct. The answer is no."
Clarice stared distrustfully at the doctor. Then the first part of what he'd said hit her, and her jaw sagged open. She gawped at him openly.
"You…you…where the hell am I?"
Dr. Lecter chuckled. "In a country home in a pleasant estate, far from the FBI. That's all you need to know for now, Clarice."
She slid out of the bed, her legs rasping against the smooth cotton sheets. If she could catch him with one or two good kicks, she could get away. But her body was no longer the smoothly trained fighting machine it had been. When her feet touched the floor, two great blasts of pain radiated from her stomach. Her knees unhinged and she spilled to the floor and lay there, gasping.
Dr. Lecter's footsteps echoed as he walked up to her calmly. He took a moment to look down at her.
"Now why did you do that, Clarice?" he asked, a sardonic tut-tut-tut evident in his tone. "Foolish, really. I assure you I shan't hurt you while you are my guest."
Clarice seethed. She'd always hated dependency. She'd always stood on her own two feet. Now she couldn't even literally do that. Now she would depend on…a serial killer.
Face it, she thought, I'm gonna be in a casserole before long.
Or was she? No, she couldn't think that way.
"I want to leave," Clarice said through gritted teeth.
Dr. Lecter squatted down. Amazingly, he managed to look dignified and elegant even while doing so. He slid his arms under Clarice and raised her back to the bed.
"I trust we shall not have to try that again," he said.
"I said, I want to leave," Clarice repeated, her eyes locked on his.
Dr. Lecter's face lit in a grin, then. She recognized it. It was the same way he had grinned at her in his cell in Memphis. When he'd told her he would listen now. When he'd challenged her.
"No." Dr. Lecter said peremptorily. His eyes did not waver from hers.
"What did you say?" Clarice said disbelievingly.
"I'm not letting you leave, Clarice," Dr. Lecter said, as if explaining it to a child. He chuckled. "I let you make the choice once. Now just look what happened."
"You can't keep me here," Clarice panted.
Dr. Lecter smiled again. "Why can't I?" he asked quizzically.
"Listen," Clarice said. "I told you I'd let you go if you found Charlene."
"And I did," Dr. Lecter agreed. "You didn't trust me, though, did you?"
"Yes, and I suppose I owe you an apology for that," Clarice said. Politeness meant a lot to Dr. Lecter.
"Why, thank you," Dr. Lecter smiled.
"But I do not want to stay here. I want to return to my home and my job and all. You're keeping me here against my will."
Dr. Lecter nodded for a beat or two. He seemed almost merry. Was the sick son of a bitch actually enjoying this? That answer was pretty obvious. Yes, he was. He had a starling with a crippled wing, and he was enjoying every minute of this.
"I see you've made your decision, Clarice," he said. "Now let's see you enforce it."
They both knew she couldn't stand, let alone defeat him in physical combat. A few beats passed. Dr. Lecter decided to be magnanimous and not rub it in. Yeah, Clarice thought, you're just having a blast, aren't you.
"So tell me," Dr. Lecter said. "Why do you want to leave?"
Clarice thought for a moment. "I have my job."
Dr. Lecter snorted. "Your job? Please, Clarice, you've been reinstated, but the stain of suspension will never quite be rinsed from you. You'll go back and work for thirty more years and retire a broken woman with no rank and no real pay. They don't appreciate you. Try again."
The truth of the statement bit deeply into her. For a moment, she remembered her younger self's words. You see a lot, doctor. His perception had only increased in the years since.
"For my family," Clarice continued.
Dr. Lecter made a face. "Your little niece, you mean? Nice girl, yes, but she needs to work on her grammar." He chuckled. "But how much does she really mean to you, Clarice?"
Clarice gawped. Hadn't she gone through enough torment for Charlene's sake? Did he think everyone was as merciless and sociopathic as he was?
"What the red fuck is that supposed to mean?" she asked heatedly, not bothering to care if she angered him.
Dr. Lecter's answer was as brutal as it was elegant. "The simple truth, Clarice. Unvarnished, that is, even if it is unpleasant. Now tell me, and don't lie, or I'll know." He sat back down in his desk chair and put his hands on his lap. "When was the last time you saw Charlene?"
Clarice's eyes narrowed. "The day she was kidnapped," she said.
"Before that."
Clarice sighed, realizing where he was going. "She was four," Clarice admitted.
"Eleven years since you last saw her, and you expect me to believe she's the reason you want to go back?" Dr. Lecter chuckled and shook his head. "It won't do. Be honest, Clarice, honesty is sometimes painful and brutal, but you must sometimes look into yourself and acknowledge your evils. You avoided your niece for the same reason you avoided your sister and all of your existing family. Because they reminded you of your origins." His voice shifted into a mocking Southern accent. "Jus' your little white-trash niece, your white-trash sister. You couldn't bear the thought that you might be like them, could you? That all the college degrees and FBI identification and that accent you sought to scrub from your voice might not have been enough? So you avoided them, Clarice. You couldn't dare acknowledge that you were blood kin to such tornado-bait, trailer-park white trash, could you?"
That cut Clarice, and cut her because she knew it was true. She'd sent birthday cards to Charlene for most of her life, and that had been it. She'd never approved of Patty's life choices. Dr. Lecter's words made her eyes fill with angry tears and she blinked them away. As he had once said, she had the onions to carry on.
"All right," Clarice said. "Maybe that was true. Maybe I didn't…maybe I wasn't a good relative. But that changed. I got to like Charlene. She's a good kid. And I'll change."
Dr. Lecter coughed. "Clarice, you cared for Charlene because she became a lamb, a needy lamb needing your rescue. That you suffered over her ordeal with Mr. McCracken I don't doubt – I saw you crying, after all. But let us face the facts. You suffered because of yourself. Because this had happened on your watch. You felt responsible."
"No," Clarice said, "that's not true."
"That's part of it," Dr. Lecter parried. "You wouldn't have felt as much guilt if it had happened when Patricia was watching her. In fact, own up, Clarice – had that happened, you'd have thought something like Well, that's what happens when you act like such white trash. You'd never have spoken it, but you'd have thought it."
"No," Clarice said powerlessly. Unsurprisingly, she found that she didn't want to think too much about that. And besides, she had to get back to the subject. "Look, Dr. Lecter. I said I wanted to leave. You wouldn't keep me here against my will, would you?" Her mind flicked past the crime-scene photos graven in her consciousness. He would if he wanted to. He'd done a lot worse.
"Oh," Dr. Lecter allowed, "first of all, you're in no condition to leave, Clarice. Secondly, I want to talk with you. We'll talk about many things…your father, your family, and yourself. And once we're done talking, Clarice…and only then…, I will ask you if you wish to stay or if you wish to leave. Right now, your demanding to be set free is just a knee-jerk response. I want to know what you truly want. And I will honor your decision then with all due care."
He crossed around to her bedside and extracted a syringe from its wrapper. Clarice eyed him helplessly. She knew where this was going. Drugs, hypnosis, therapy. The tools of a psychiatrist. She didn't fight him as he gave her the injection. Even as the needle entered her arm, sending a rush of psychotropic drugs into her bloodstream, she knew that Dr. Lecter would slowly probe her mind until she would agree to stay. As her eyes closed and she felt herself finally relax, she knew that she was lost. That she would agree to abandon her family, her job, everything she had fought and struggled for. She would stay with him. As she slid into a drugged state of calmness, she heard his voice speaking gently.
A few weeks later, she had to wonder why she'd thought it was so terrible. She told him she would stay. She understood much better now.