Author's note: Been a bit since I updated this fic – I was in the final stretch of 'Shades', and now that one's out of the way. So here we are – a bit on the short side for me, but ends with a bang.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The only sound disturbing the silence was Will Graham's tortured breathing. Alice stared up at the man on the landing. He glanced down at her imperiously. His mien betrayed curiosity without warmth.
"Hello, Alice," Dr. Hannibal Lecter said calmly, the first words he had ever spoken to his progeny. Their eyes met. Dr. Lecter tilted his head and observed his daughter's coloring and features. The pale skin and dark hair. The strange maroon eyes. On her left hand he noted the extra middle finger that had marked him as different since birth.
There was something pleasing in that, he thought, but he was not terribly pleased that his offspring had seen fit to capture and starve Clarice. Oddly, from what it seemed, Alice had later seen fit to supply Clarice with food. Well, he would have to qualify that. She had supplied her with junk food. Pringles and peanut butter cups. It was enough to make the good doctor shudder. Didn't she know what that would do to a captive?
Alice stood rooted to the spot, her eyes locked on the man on the landing.
"You're my father," she whispered.
Dr. Lecter nodded once. "Yes," he said. He was quite calm. Despite Clarice's explanation of his daughter's mental illnesses, despite the fact that the FBI was undoubtedly on its way, he was calm. He controlled Clarice with a simple hand on her arm. And he did not fear Will's boy, crouched over his father with a panicked look on his face. The girl who had created all this mayhem seemed transfixed by him. He had control of the situation.
"You're Jane's daughter, I take it?" Dr. Lecter said.
Alice's face tightened, but she nodded.
"My condolences," he said. "She must not have been much of a mother."
Alice stared at him for several moments before speaking. Her jaw wobbled. Even from the landing, he could hear the sounds of her shallow respiration. It occurred him that she had been waiting all her life for this. She stared at him as if he was a lost idol recently found.
"Why didn't you ever see me?" she demanded. It seemed she had a thousand questions and that was merely the first that had bubbled to the top.
Dr. Lecter's eyes flicked to the Grahams, then back to her. She might be armed. He couldn't tell.
"I did not know," he explained. "I was already incarcerated by the time of your birth."
"But…," she said.
"I assure you, you didn't need to go to these extremes," he said. He maintained the usual distant demeanor he affected with those who he did not feel like tormenting. He jerked his head at the Grahams, one atop the other. Josh held the towel over his father's wound.
"I…I wanted to meet you…," Alice whispered. Dr. Lecter watched her eyes moisten. Odd, that. She would have to learn control. Perhaps she had been hoping for something more from him. "Ever since I knew, I wanted to meet you. Someone like me."
Dr. Lecter nodded. "To some degree," he said. "But we are different people. I dare say if Clarice had been in my custody, she'd have been fed better."
"I fed her," Alice protested. Now a tear did slip down her cheek. Dr. Lecter found this also a bit odd. She barely knew him; he held none of the psychological reins that a father might normally hold over his daughter. Yet it seemed he had some sort of control. That was good; he would need it. Perhaps she would help with Clarice.
"I saw what you fed her," Dr. Lecter said peremptorily. "Were you trying to kill her by sodium overdose?"
Alice took a step towards the landing. "I don't want to talk about her," she said beseechingly. "You can have her. I'll give her to you as a present." Her voice was hushed and choked. "I just…I just want a father."
"All right, then," Dr. Lecter said. The important thing was escape. Having Clarice was a welcome bonus. This was actually not inconvenient. She wasn't in fighting form and her resistance would be minimal. Dealing with his troubled offspring could wait. "Come here, Alice. For now we must leave this place. We may talk further in a safer location." His eyes gleamed. "Come here, Alice. We shall talk. I'm afraid the Grahams have other plans." He chuckled and shook his head. "Besides, Alice, he's FBI. I assure you it won't work out."
Alice Pierpont began to walk up the stairs to her father. She paid no attention at all to Josh and Will behind her. Will Graham reached up for his son's shirt and pulled him down low. He felt tingly and weak, as if an invisible membrane was drawing him away from the world. He set his trembling jaw and forced his dry lips to form words.
"Josh," he wheezed. "There…under the coffee table…my…my g…my gun."
Josh's heart raced as he stared down at his father. Had Alice done this, or Dr. Lecter? No, wait. Alice couldn't have done it. She'd been with him all day. That meant Dr. Lecter had done this deed. Just as he had before.
His eyes slid over to the coffee table. Under it, he could see the wood-grained butt of the pistol. But his father needed him there. He needed to keep the pressure on his father's stomach wound. If he left his father's side, it might cost his father his life.
"Dad, I can't," he hissed.
Will nodded towards the gun again. His face was sheened in sweat and pain wracked his features, but his eyes were clear.
"Go," he said. "Now, while they're…," he gestured back at the monsters, father and daughter, staring at each other across the gulf of the stairs.
Josh trembled just a bit and steeled himself. As quickly as he could, he padded from his father's side to the coffee table. It took just a moment to reach under the table, and then the gun was in his hand. He stuffed it down against the small of his back after checking it to make sure he wouldn't shoot himself in the butt and then returned to his father's side.
Alice was moving up the stairs. Dr. Lecter was explaining something calmly. His eyes flitted over Josh. Josh stared back at him. Here was the monster that had bedeviled his father since he had been very young.
His face was more aged and weathered than Alice's, he thought. In the doctor he saw something dark and atavistic. The fine suit, spectacles, and title of MD only camouflaged it, but the man's essential nature was not changed in the least by its trappings. He was the reflection of human fear, Josh thought. The vampire, demon, dybbuk. The creature that stood outside human caves at the dawn of time, memorialized in frightened stick drawings on cave walls.
The monster.
His spawn stood below him, staring up at him. Was this her quest? It seemed that all of this had been to draw him near. Yet Alice struck him as more human than her father. Why would she want to know his dark influence? Was what her father was not made clear by what he had done to Josh's own father?
If anything, he thought, there was more humanity in Alice than in her father. She had kidnapped both Clarice and him. She had caged Clarice and forced herself on him. Yet in her own demented way, she did seem to care. She'd tried to make both of them more comfortable. Her father had chosen to do what he had done; she did have the cloud of mental illness clouding her free will. She was too dangerous to be allowed to roam free, Josh thought, but she was not quite so evil as her father.
Those thoughts flashed through Josh's mind in the blink of an eye. He removed the gun from the back of his waistband. It was a .44 Special, an ungainly, powerful pistol. The bullets it was chambered for were powerful and deadly. This was his father's choice of weapon after having lost his faith in .38s. A suitable weapon to take up against monsters.
And he would need to do exactly that. If Alice made it up the stairs, then she and Dr. Lecter would leave with Clarice. God only knew what would happen to her then.
As an FBI agent, Josh Graham was taught the FBI's philosophy of shooting. Once you draw your gun, you have already made the decision to shoot. When you shoot, shoot to kill.
Alice was closer, but Dr. Lecter was more dangerous. Better to take her down first. He watched her carefully. Her back was to him as she began to mount the stairs.
Despite himself, he didn't want to kill her. She was dangerous, but perhaps not too dangerous to be allowed to live. Besides, pumping two bullets into her head while her back was turned struck him as hardly fair. She'd tried to save his father. He would let her live for that.
He would have to move fast. Dr. Lecter was inhumanly quick. Perhaps he should shoot Dr. Lecter first. No. Then Alice might get him. She was unarmed so far as he knew, but she might have something up her sleeve.
Josh Graham cocked the revolver and stood. Alice Pierpont, perhaps twenty feet in front of him, was an easy target. Her back rose huge in the sights. He pulled the trigger and a great gout of flame emitted from the barrel. Alice fell face-first onto the stairs, a great red bloom at her shoulder. But she let out a cry as she fell and moved as she slid to the ground. She would live, and Josh would allow her to keep her life.
Time itself seemed to slow down for him. He had thought there might be fear. There was none. He was icy calm as he did what had to be done. He cocked the revolver again and lifted the barrel. Alice would be down; he would not fire on her again. Instead, he aimed the gun at the monster who had tried to kill his father.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clarice dive for the floor. Even despite her ordeal, her training held. That was good, and a grim smile crossed his features. His field of fire was clear. Dr. Lecter's face was struck with surprise. He knew, Josh thought. He knew that today was his dying day. For him, Josh had no mercy. Instead, he simply aimed the gun and dismissed Dr. Lecter's face from his consciousness. His world was the front sight of the pistol and the red silk tie that lay bisected in it. In his heart he knew it was right; there was no way he could miss. His bullets would strike the monster's black heart and stop it once and for all.
Josh Graham took a breath, checked his aim a final time in a fraction of a second, and squeezed the trigger three times.