A/N: This chapter should put to rest any suspicions as to my opinion on inter-canonical romances. Maybe. And I apologize in advance for whatever anachronisms may pop up in Clarice's dialogue. It's hard to do "pissed-off" in Victorian dialect. ;-) And yes, I am aware that the drug that Dr. Lecter mentions will not exist for another sixty years. But…he is a genius after all.
Chapter 19
The Darkest Hour
The darkest hour is just before dawn.
– Unknown Origin
The inarticulate cry rattled in her ears like bones in the air, and she opened her eyes to see Hannibal standing over them. She saw his eyes first, could not stop looking at them. They were wild and desperate, stripped of every vestige of the dignity and control he so prized. The maroon in his eyes was pale and thin, like droplets of red blood spread over shattered glass.
His hands were on her shoulders—she never saw him move—holding her in a death's grip. The hands trembling with unbelievable force and shaking her as he screamed, screamed, "Clarice! CLARICE!"
He released her shoulders just quickly when he saw her eyes open, grabbed her wrists instead and drew her to him. His mouth was white around the edges. "My god, my god…what is this…what…" – he was shaking her again – "what did he do? What did he do to you?" He released her, his palms bloodstained where they had touched her wrists, and immediately grabbed her shoulders again, leaving red handprints upon her skin.
She was aware of screaming, the look of pained desperation in his eyes, God his eyes, she had never seen them like that before. She grabbed his shoulders as well, holding him away from her, afraid that he would break. "He did it to himself, Hannibal! He did it to himself, all of this…!" tears were streaming down her cheeks and she didn't even notice, nor did she notice the way his hands went rigid. "He tore open his arm and was rolling his flesh in his fingers as if they were pieces of meat. Just staring dumbly down at what he was doing, and the look on his face! Like he didn't even know why it should hurt him so much, he…" Her words dissolved into sobs.
He did break then. She felt every raging emotion seeping out from inside him as his hands slid off her body and he collapsed on the floor. For the longest time he made no sound, his shoulders bowed as if weighted by something impossibly heavy. Then she heard a low keening wail bubble its way out from his throat. The cry increased in volume until it sounded like an animal in pain.
She sat frozen in place, afraid to move, afraid of the man kneeling before her that she no longer recognized. Afraid to…she looked back, saw Erik's body slumped upon the floor.
Clarice crawled across to him, noting how Hannibal's cry did not cease or even waver, he seemed not to notice. She reached Erik and slowly worked her hands underneath his arms, taking care to lift the bandaged arm from the ground. She remembered…the first night, how she had lifted his full frame and carried him up a flight of stairs without a second thought. But now her arms felt so heavy…she had no strength anymore.
"Hannibal." Slowly, slowly, the dark head came up, the eyes dark and uncomprehending. "Help me. Now."
Trembling like a crippled man, he got to his feet and crossed over to her. He stood there, unmoving, until a sharp look for her made him crouch down and grip Erik's lower body as if it were a sack. He seemed to realize after a few steps that she was directing them towards the bed. His eyes cleared slightly—they passed over Erik's bleeding arm carefully, surgically.
"No…downstairs. To the dining room." His voice was confident and knowing but barely audible.
They stumbled down the stairs together, every step a threatening obstacle to their unseeing eyes. Sunlight stabbed through the windows—could it really still be daytime?—and seared her eyes. Erik's still face, peaceful in its natural distortion, filled her mind. Hannibal's voice broke her reverie. "The door—get the door."
She looked up, saw as he moved towards her to take Erik's entire weight in his arms. She saw that they were in front of the closed door of the dining room. It was Sunday and the servants were not around.
Clarice opened the door and walked in before them. She turned up every lamp full, the light gleamed brightly off the silver place settings. She cleared the table with a swift jerk of the tablecloth—heard the crash of silver and porcelain against the walls—and replaced the cloth upon the table in time for it to receive Erik's body as Hannibal set him down.
"Wait," he said simply. He walked from the room, leaving Clarice alone.
I've been waiting for nearly a year. I can surely wait a little more.
She looked at Erik, saw with relief how his chest rose and fell weakly yet rhythmically. He was still bleeding, she could see a tiny spreading spot of red, like a blooming rose, on the bandages. He had lost so much blood, and he was so pale…so pale.
She reached forward and brushed a ragged lock of hair from his face, moving her hand over his forehead—hating the cold, clammy feel—warming his flesh with her hand. The sound of the door announced Hannibal's return. She did not move her hand. She heard him pause behind her.
"While I appreciate your concern, it is best if he remains as cold as possible to minimize blood flow." Clarice looked up, startled. She could see life in Hannibal's eyes again, but it was weary, smiling wanly at her as he motioned to a chair with his head. "Sit down. This will take some time."
He set a bulging black bag atop the table and began removing silver tools, bandages, and several spools of surgical thread. Clarice sat slowly down in the chair as Hannibal lifted a pair of scissors in his hand, the sharp edges glinting in the bright lamplight. He cut through the makeshift bandages and went to work.
She watched him carefully for as long as she could. She saw how the lost expression in his eyes faded as intense concentration took its place. The fear that had cast such a dark shadow across his features alighted with the knowledge of his genius and faultless expertise as he painstakingly stitched torn nerves and muscle tissue back together. She watched him for hours and when exhaustion finally closed her eyes in sleep the last thing she saw was the relaxed confidence in the eyes of the master at his craft.
Clarice woke to feel something cold and wet against her face. Her eyes opened to see and feel Hannibal's hand at her throat. She stiffened for a moment before realizing that the hand was holding a wet towel and mopping the dried blood from her chin and throat.
Hannibal saw her eyes go wide, and his hands automatically drew away from her neck. He left the towel in her hands and the image of his downcast eyes imprinted in her mind. She moved the towel over her throat, feeling the dried blood loosen and the shade of red upon the white cloth grow darker. She enjoyed the coolness; it was oppressively hot in the room. Although Hannibal had turned the lamps down, the heat remained and the open windows with curtains pulled tightly over them to hide them from view did little to ventilate.
Hannibal pulled up a chair next to her, and sat down about six feet away. Clarice glanced past him, and saw Erik's unconscious form stretched out upon the table like a corpse, his left arm neatly bandaged, lying in the middle of a seemingly enormous bloodstain upon the cloth. She swallowed and her stomach turned.
He handed her a fresh towel and took back the red-stained one from her trembling hands. "He will live," he said simply, answering her unspoken question. The edge of his mouth twitched. "I injected him with my entire supply of saline solution. I had better not have wasted it."
Her laugh cut off in a strangled sob. And she wiped at her eyes with the towel, leaving streaks of red across her face. "Always a game, still always a game."
She noticed then that her blood-soaked dress was gone and she was wearing a clean cotton dress shirt that extended to her knees. Her face flushed red at the thought of him changing her clothing as she slept, and she was struck again by how much a stranger he was to her. She should not feel that way. They were married.
No, she checked herself with an inner chuckle, they weren't. She had nearly forgotten. Hannibal had long since sworn never again to set foot in a church for any reason other than to indulge his artistic curiosities. There were memories he would rather forget. He had arranged the papers and the register's silence, threaded the bank accounts together, and purchased the rings…though neither of them remembered to wear them.
"Remarkably quick-witted for having returned from the dead," Hannibal remarked, wrapping the bloody towel around his fingers.
"But I wasn't," she said. A niggling suspicion arose in her mind. "You didn't think that the two of us were…" Her words trailed off at the inexplicable look in his face.
"If you were," he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "I honestly cannot say I would have blamed you."
Her thoughts ground to a screeching halt. At a loss for other words, she dug her barb in deeper, probing, digging into his pain to find the answers she had been seeking for the better part of a year. "And how are you now so sure that we were not?"
He brought his hand out from his pocket, it was holding a folded piece of paper in his hands. It looked vaguely familiar. "This, Clarice. Or…was this your game?"
She dug her fingers into the towel, feeling the fibers stretch under the pressure. "That goddamned thief."
He raised his eyebrows. "Such harsh words for the man you tried to save. Was he not your little lamb? The one you felt you had to protect no matter what the cost?"
"That…was a long time ago."
"I don't think so, Clarice. Just like the little orphaned farm girl who couldn't save the spring lambs from being slaughtered before her eyes, the grown up ex-Special Agent Starling can no longer stand by as the monster she married dangles these lives like marionettes in his treacherous claws."
Her knuckles were bone white from her death grip upon the towel. She heard the sound of tearing fabric as her fingers ripped through the thick cloth. Her head snapped up, ready to deliver a scathing retort. And stopped when she saw that he was not looking at her at all. His eyes stared to the side, looking inward. For all his sarcasm there had been no directed malice in his words, and it confused her.
She stood slowly and took a shuffling step in his direction. "Why these questions, Hannibal? Why these expired, tiresome mind games?"
He had draped the towel over his knee and now unfolded the scrap of paper with both hands. "'I love you desperately, more so than even my own sanity. And for that, I cannot leave.'" The note dropped from his hands. "An entire page of this…was there any truth to your mawkish saccharine words, or were you exploring an alternative career as a serial romance novelist?"
Once again the bile and bitterness in his words did not roll past his tongue. He averted his eyes as he spoke. He looked away!
Almost by instinct she reached out and turned his face back towards her. She looked into his eyes; there seemed to be a dull sheen upon them, locking her out from their true depths. Without releasing him, she said, "I merely found it easier to say these things without you around to hear them."
He pulled away her hand that was at his chin. There were still some smudges of dried redness upon the back. He wiped them away with the towel. "So you were speaking in earnest," he said thoughtfully. "What I can't imagine, after spending this year with a bare shell of a man, is why."
Her jaw clenched at his soft query and at the delicate pressure of his suddenly gentle hands upon hers. "You can't…" She tried to draw her hand away but he held it firmly in place and then the floodgates seemed to open.
"You can't imagine…it's all true, of course. And you knew it from the moment I visited you in that cell. I am…enthralled by you, in every sense of the word. The fiery-spirited Special Agent Starling who told a national agency to go fuck themselves weeps like a drooping willow before the man she abandoned everything for. And why? Because he fascinated her, he set something free inside her and she loved it. He made her believe there was something more to the world than the black and white demons and angels of her childhood. And she…loved it." She tried again to pull away, half-heartedly tugging at her hand as her throat twisted around itself.
Hannibal watched her attempt to compose herself. His fingers moved slowly over the back of her hand. "Such a different outburst from before…oh yes, I remember. That time when you confronted this murderer and made him tremble. Yes, I remember. Yet you speak this time with equal earnest." He raised his eyes to meet hers briefly before dropping them again to concentrate on her hands.
"Let me tell you…how it was before. When you flew as an avenging angel to rescue this murderer who was quite happily going to his doom, and when I lifted your unconscious form in my arms and brought you to safety, your life was the least of my concerns. I was fascinated by you, by this woman who spent her whole life fighting for justice and then risked her life to prevent someone from meeting his.
"Nothing fascinated me more than the loss of faith and you were such a prize specimen. I toyed with you, made you relive your most painful experiences and quelled the fire in your eyes with a vicious cocktail that I knew you could never fight. Benzodiazepines do not play fair, but I was finished with fair games, I was finished with quid pro quo. I had you completely and I was not about to let you go. I could have done anything…"
"But you didn't," Clarice interrupted. "You had so many opportunities, you simply refused to touch me until I had made my own decision." She smiled with a mixture of bitterness and cunning. "What could have been going through the mind of Hannibal Lecter? Hannibal the Cannibal, who had never failed to take what he wanted, did not take what he could not live without. I still wonder…if I had not stayed, would you have used your more certain methods to secure my obedience?"
Dr. Lecter took several moments before answering. Then, he simply smiled, nodded, and said, "Yes. I could have quite easily killed you and retained you in my memory place. I could have lived on with nothing but a perfected image you in my mind. But when the time came, I could not." He looked up at her, his eyes stormy with passion and uncertainty. But he continued speaking. "And I feared it. I feared it like you feared me but remained enthralled. I had found something that could not be possessed. I had discovered the perfect specimen to take Mischa's place, but…I could not. At that moment, it was not I who made the decision. When you offered yourself to me, I was…afraid and unprepared, and I…loved it. I love you, Clarice. I love you more than simple words can tell."
The soft and achingly simple sentence fell between them like a bomb waiting to go off.
Clarice stumbled back a few paces and then froze, her body held immobile by something she could not comprehend. This same indescribable force now surged through the veins behind her eyes, making them burn. She searched Hannibal's face, hunting desperately for a hidden meaning to his words, fumbling for the gauze of deception to soothe the naked emotion that now scorched her skin. She found nothing, and with that revelation, whatever force that was holding her back cut off as abruptly as an undampened chord.
She flew at him, she heard the thud of his chair as he stood up to receive her. And she was screaming and striking at every exposed area of his body that she could. "You bastard!" she shrieked. "You manipulative bastard!" He had grabbed her arms, dulling the force of her onslaught. She continued to flail away. "I won't let you do this to me again. I…wont—"
He silenced her with a kiss.
Her eyes went wide. Her hands trembled by his sides, fingers curling around empty air. Then her arms came around him swiftly, possessively.
They tore at each other. The pain and frustration they had suffered for nearly a year searing their frantic embrace with a fiery breathlessness. Their mouths melted together and battled, lips and tongues moving at a frenzied pace, giving and taking with equal fervor. His hands buried themselves in her hair as her nails dug into the back of his neck, pulling him closer with both her mouth and her hands and when they parted, the tears that stained her face were not hers alone.
Hannibal's breathing was ragged and uneven as he pulled away to behold her. Her face was flushed and streaked with blood and tears with strands of loose hair clinging to her damp cheeks. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Nestling her head into the crook of his neck, he gazed over her hair with bright eyes. "My dear," he said, his voice low to disguise its trembling. "I, ah…trust that you do not now expect me to say such things with frequency. I do have a reputation to maintain after all."
She laughed, choking back a sob as her tears stained his collar. She tightened her arms around him and felt him do the same. "I love you, you idiot," she said as she kissed his face with trembling lips. "I love you so much."
Hannibal kissed her hair and inhaled her sweet scent. He hesitated infinitesimally and then drew back. He reached into his jacket and brought his hand out slowly, almost shyly. He was holding his golden wedding band. "Will you marry me?"
"What?" She was sure her mouth had dropped open.
He swallowed and took a deep, shuddering breath. "I…I refuse to lose you again." He pulled her to him. "Will you travel with me out to the countryside away from any tolerable form of civilization where no one knows our names? Will you enter a shabby, filthy country church and stand before the altar of a God whom I have always loathed while a priest pronounces the words that will bind us in holy matrimony?"
She wasn't sure if the sound she made was a sob or a laugh, she suspected a combination of both. She rained incessant light kisses upon his face and brow. "Of course I will, Hannibal Lecter. We both will."
He blinked, looking at her, suddenly unsure of how to respond. Then for the first time that she could remember in a long time, a genuine smile appeared on his face, chasing away the darkness that clung to his eyes. Hannibal kissed her forehead again, his hand trembling slightly. His face turned serious. "Clarice, I'm sorry for—"
"Don't." She smiled. "It would only sound silly." She squeezed his body. "I understand. Trust me that I understand."
I'm sorry for everything. He held her as if she were a delicate Ming vase, regarding her with a mixture of awe and respect.
She framed his face in her hands and her eyes hardened. "What do you plan to do to Christine?"
He swallowed. "I was not lying to you before, my dear. She dwells in the past, in her memories. I was attempting to make her forget and if I had to—"
"We'll find another way."
"But—"
"We'll find another way." He felt the argument die in his throat. "And Erik?"
Hannibal sighed. "I have known Erik for a very long time. He is the most intelligent man I know yet he has never failed to be remarkably stupid when it comes to knowing what's best for himself."
"And you do?"
He closed his eyes as if he were in pain. "I…thought I did."
She slid from his grasp and crossed over to where the former Phantom lay in his own blood. Still deeply unconscious, his normally tense jaw and drawn features had softened, lending a sense of boyish innocence to his twisted face. Clarice lowered her hand to caress his good cheek, feeling the chilled flesh warm underneath her touch. "I will not condemn your motives, Hannibal. Heaven knows they were nobler than I would have thought possible. But to think that this was worth it…that the poison is gone from his body, that you pushed him beyond the edge and he returned safely. No, Hannibal. I hope that…that you see now. It was not worth it for me, it is not for him. The morphine is gone and with it his defenses. He will now have to face everything that he attempted to suppress for years."
She whirled around to him again. "I will care for him. I will…do whatever I must and this time, you will not interfere. Do you understand?"
He pulled her to him and said, in a sad voice devoid of resentment, "Yes."
"Good." Her hand snaked its way up his neck to caress his hair. She did not speak her greatest fear. She did not ask for a doctor's opinion on the extent of the damage to the nerves of Erik's arm, his hand…his fingers. She felt heat pressing against the backs of her eyes and she furiously shook it away. There had been enough pain for one day. "When will he wake?"
"I cannot say. Perhaps hours, perhaps days. I dare not give him anything to hasten the process."
"Hmm, I may have an idea."
"Oh?"
"Yes, I need to go back to the Opera House."
"Alone?"
A pause. "Yes."
"I will have the carriage ready in five minutes."
He was floating upon a warm breath of darkness, the pleasant night that had been his shelter for so much of his life had returned when he needed it the most. Here there was no pain. No stabbing agony in his pale eyes.
A noise was intruding, a rhythmic sound of heavy breathing, catching upon itself with every breath. It was…sobbing? A female voice… the clear, bell-like quality of the cries echoed and little tears of light were falling through the darkness, flashing with a warm, painless glow and each drop was clear like a baby's laughter. A baby too young to despair, to young to be afraid. He watched the light fall before his face. And smiled.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a gilded hall draped with tapestries and mirrors. His hand flew to his face but stopped short of touching it, he knew that there was no mask there. A strange resignation came over him and his hand dropped, his shoulders hunching as he began to walk.
He took care not to turn his head to look in the mirrors as he passed them. The carpet underneath his feet was deep and familiar.
His head snapped up at a cough from nearby. He took a step back. He saw Monsieur Firmin take out his pocketwatch and look at it.
"It is four o'clock in the afternoon," the dead man said, his voice bubbled and grated in his throat. He looked up at Erik. "You should be awake," he drawled. "The performance begins in a few hours." He tapped the edge of the timepiece against a spectacle, making a clicking noise like the turning of a key. His face was white, his head cocked at a crazy angle with a thin trail of red running down from the corner of his mouth. His chest looked wrong.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
When Erik did not speak, Firmin lowered his hand from his face and scoffed. "Just as well," he gargled. "We don't want you here anymore. This thing you are, we don't want it. And neither do you."
Erik took a step back as if he had been struck and as he did, he stepped inadvertently in front of a mirror. Before he could turn away, he saw…he saw a ragged black shadow, formless and clinging to the carpet like overgrown mold, sickly and faded. He held up his hands and realized that they had dissolved into formless vapor as well. He had become a true ghost at last.
A flash of blue to his right tore his mind away from what would surely have been a deeply depressing moment. He turned away from Firmin without a second thought and raced after the vision. He ran through the twists and turns of hallways at once familiar and foreboding and emerged in his cellars. He heard murmuring voices in the air as he raced down, down, down through winding stone passageways and finally stopped at the edge of the lake.
A faint blue mist clung to the surface of the black water and he could see the vision disappearing into the haze. Almost as if he had willed it, he saw his boat to his side and he jumped inside, pushing himself into the middle of the lake.
Once he was well away from shore, he poled across the lake with deliberate slow strokes. The unceasing murmurs in the darkness reverberated loudly, bouncing off the water, then fading away before their echoes could breathe.
With every stroke across the lake, he felt his formless body solidify a bit more and when the boat ran aground before his front door, he was fully human. He stepped onto land, looking around the familiar surroundings that were less familiar than before.
He drew back before touching the doorknob. There was someone here. Ignoring the paralyzing dread that seized his limbs, he pushed the door open into his main room, hardly noticing the lack of destruction or shattered glass. He stopped short at another sight.
Clarice Starling had a small stack of his music in her hands and looked up from where she leaned against the piano as he entered. Her blue dress shimmered in the candlelight. She raised a sheet, the red ink upon it wild and illegible. "How you musicians read this stuff is beyond my comprehension," she said.
His tongue felt thick and strange in his mouth. "How…how did you find your way down?"
She fixated him with a look as if he were a particularly dimwitted child. "I walked straight from here to there."
"That's impossible. There is no path so simple."
She threw up her hands in exasperation. "Brilliant man with the stubbornness of the devil! When will you learn that you are not alone? You have no right to accuse Christine of being selfish, you just as selfish as she. When she attempted to draw you from the darkness where you lived, you pushed her away, clinging selfishly to the misery you think you so richly deserve, leaving nothing but your memory in her mind. A festering, ceaseless memory of which she can never be free."
Every word that tumbled from her mouth hit him like a stinging slap even as his mind screamed in denial. "No…that's not true. It wasn't like that." He gazed helplessly around his room, desperately seeking comfort in it surroundings. His eyes darted to the piano as a familiar form suddenly alighted upon it. His gaze flew to Clarice.
She smiled wryly. "I found her curled inside your bed."
His arms outstretched automatically as the cat leapt down from the piano and jumped into his arms. He stroked its soft back lightly. The animal purred, snuggling into the crook of his elbow. He smiled and looked down at the creature. "I have missed you, Ayesha."
"Adoration." His head swung in her direction, perplexed, as she spoke. "What a pretty picture it makes." Clarice dropped the leaflets of music unceremoniously back atop the piano. "You can see heaven in this illiterate scrawl on paper. You can see happiness in what you hold in your arms."
Erik felt himself rooted to the floor, powerless to move, as Clarice came closer and closer. As during their first confrontation in the cellars, sweat began to form on his forehead. When she finally stopped before him, he could see his trembling form fully reflected in her eyes. He barely noticed when Ayesha jumped out of his arms, hissing at the intruder.
Her smile was wan, like that of a sickly child. "And yet…you cannot see what stands right before your eyes." Without letting him respond, she placed one sun-browned hand upon his unmarred cheek and the other behind his head and drew his face firmly down to hers.
Her mouth closed over his with resolution and finality. Her lips were roughened and fierce, but oh so soft… They moved over his with leisure, warm and insistent, taking their slow torturous time as her sigh filled his ears like the crackle of wildfire. When she released him, he felt something draw away with her and he swayed on his feet. He reached for her impulsively and she pulled back, a sudden smile lighting her features.
"Wait…" He croaked. With every step she took away, he felt himself grow weaker and weaker. He grabbed the arm of a couch for support as he sank to the floor.
"We have things to discuss, Erik." The voice was light, musical, and impossibly familiar. His head snapped up, and black stars exploded in his vision. Before the darkness claimed him, the last thing he saw were the eyes amidst a blurry face and they were blink blink blinking blue in the darkness…
He opened his eyes again when he felt the warm breath upon his face and the slight weight upon his chest. He felt the shape start in surprise at his sudden movement, but soon she was rubbing her head under his chin and purring as though she would never stop.
"Ayesha…" His dry lips curled in a weak smile even as his head felt as if it had emerged from a meat grinder. His left arm felt as if it were paralyzed, so he lifted his right to hug the cat to him.
"—knew she would wake him."
His vision cleared enough that he could make out other shapes, their edges blurry and dully shining. He watched as the two shapes came together to form one.
"—tried to get the music box, too, but it was locked in the vaults."
Erik blinked again and then he saw the figures of Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter standing there, hands entwined. He saw her mouth open as she smiled.
"His eyes just—"He saw her hand approaching, stretching across that interminable gulf, ignoring Ayesha's hiss as it descended to rest upon his head. He felt the hand sink into the tender softness that was his forehead. Black irises of pain bloomed behind his eyes and he made an inarticulate noise in his throat. The hand drew away almost immediately.
He saw Hannibal hug her close, holding her like he never wished to let her go.
"I love you."
Her hand had left a burning soreness upon his forehead and he moved to lift his left hand to wipe it away. His arm would not move. Ayesha's blue eyes winked at him quizzically as his face contorted with the effort. It was too much and he finally stopped trying, releasing his breath in a soundless sigh as he drifted away into a dreamless sleep.