And like greased lightning here I am with yet another chapter several readers drop dead with sheer shock So here is Chapter the Sixth and I hope you enjoy it…it breaks from the present action to delve a little into Gretchens past and her link with the good doctor.
Jeff equally wicked grin Well, let's just say it is going to be pretty satisfying when you really learn what a …ahem…'nasty' Warwick really is…and he will have help from his lovely assistant no doubt!. However there are chapters and chapters before that so keep reading!
XTHPHOIDMARYX- Yay! My insecurities about my OC are yet more diminished! You go Gretch, they love ya!..Yes, and the blind issue I answered instantly in a review so plz check.
Kyro- Ergh…essays suck…and they are never about Hannibal adoration or I would do so well…darn it…And no I have not stopped! The chapters are coming thick and fast so keep reading!
Nanci- Yes, caffeine…stimulant of the Gods…and legal too! hugs coffee pot Glad you enjoyed last chapter- I hadn't really planned the mouse business but I am glad with the way it turned out!
JahWarrior- Ah-ha! Hello there, fellow Studiolo-ite! Thank you for taking the time to find/read my story…much appreciated. I'm on a roll with this 'un so keep following!
Wolf- Glad you're hooked! Hope my caffeine fuelled fingers can whip up the chapters fast enough to keep y'all engaged…I will try…sups more of that lovely, lovely coffee
Bibbidy-boo- I know! After a coupl'a 'doppio espresso's' and I'm pelting out these chapters…wo0t!
The contact thing was hard to write (god, I'm always griping about something…) because I didn't want it to appear too sexual…well not at the present time…possibly…ahem…and yay! I am actually updating…again! Hell freezes over
And thank-yousies to any other reviewers I haven't named!
Also, biiiig thank you to my newest beta reader, demon sloth, who may find innuendo in everything (grrrrr!) buuuut does put up with my disgusting amount of typos and other cock ups of the key variety…so yeah…any of those…blame her..gyahahahahahaha!
The letter did not engage Dr Lecter interest for very long, but he followed it to the end just in case the foolish man gave something interesting away. It was what Dr Lecter had been expecting for a while, ever since he realised the young woman's connection with Warwick. It gloated of his recent business achievements- little more than good use of well paid advisors- and over the fact 'my old nut doctor is down there amongst his nuts, now', apparently much to Warwick's' amusement. It confirmed what Dr Lecter had already deduced of his relation to Gretchen and the terms in which she arrived into this world. And perhaps most interesting to Dr Lecter, it spoke of her mother, Emily Archer. The sole tie between this arrogant, distasteful man and himself.
Dr Lecter put the paper down slowly, his mind storing the flow of bitter words for later reference, his mind neatly storing it then racing fast, fast onto a very different wing of the great memory palace. Great cherry wood doors opened soundlessly and he swept through, the drawers of a vast cabinet shooting open, spilling their contents for his hurried inspection. A soft, rose coloured leather book fell to his feet and all the memories he had bound to it hit him.
Emily Archer as she was then, so alike her daughter that lay in front of him now.
Emily Archer then.
He called up their very first meeting in the large, airy space of his Baltimore office. He was seated at his thick panelled oak desk when she entered, pecking nervously on the door. Waiting for his voice before she entered the room.
She was a small, timid looking woman. Her hair was tied up in a neat bun, a few unruly tendrils spilling out behind her ears. Her face showed signs of great physical beauty, ruined by the strain in her eyes and skin. She smelt clean and fresh but had no defining aroma of her own. Dr Lecter had found that strange.
Sitting on his couch now, he watched her speak, her mouth drawn with anguish, her neat brows tucked together over her once lively eyes.
"I can't even stand to touch her, doctor. Isn't that terrible? My own child and I feel nothing towards her. All I see is her father- in her eyes there he is, all the time. It just keeps taking me back and I can't stand it any more. Please, please help me."
There were tears making her eyes fresh looking and bitter.
Dr Lecter had diagnosed her as having severe Post Natal Depression but she had suffered acute depression in the past and also trauma in the attack nearly five years ago that had lead to her rejected child. He organised more sessions with her and eventually began to gain her trust, although she remained skitterish as a wild colt. Her plight touched him as he never had been before by a case. He finally worked around to getting her to relive the traumatic attack that had left her isolated and scared for her life and that of her child.
She stared at her hands for many minutes, the dry fingers knotted around one another in tension. Finally she looked up at him, her eyes betraying fresh tears she was now strong enough to withhold.
"Of course I was flattered he even noticed me. I had only seen him in passing before of course, except from in 'Time' or on the television. And one day it was just he and I in his office and he started to talk. I don't even remember what it was we spoke of now, but it seemed fascinating at the time."
She gave a small laugh and seemed to ease a bit, her fingers relaxing if only for the moment. Dr Lecter knew he had gained her trust and knew of the rare substance it was made. He felt that trust now and was careful not to exploit it for his own motives. His anger had been running a mock at the present, he had killed two in the space of a fortnight and he felt the tug of whim pulling him to strike again.
"He asked me out to dinner as I was leaving that night- of course who was I to refuse? Any woman would give her right leg to even speak to him as I had. And as I said…I was… flattered."
Her voice betrayed a weary certainty she would never be able to experience such young passion and whim again. Not now. Not ever.
"He took me to the most luxurious restaurant in town- Casa Bellisimo on Garrett Front Street. It was fantastic, the food, the candles, the company…"
She gave an ironic laugh that betrayed her saddened, damaged soul.
"And then of course he felt he had…earned something. I should have known it wasn't my charming company he was after."
"If he could not find pleasure in your mere company, then the man is a bigger fool than even I imagined." Dr Lecter said with real vehemence and Emily could see he was utterly genuine. She gave him a rare smile that only tinged her world weary eyes.
"Well of course I got invited up for 'coffee' and he started getting progressively closer …then he began toughing my leg and my arm and I stood up to leave. I told him we must be here on different agendas and he looked sheepish and told me I could go. The son of a bitch even said sorry."
She broke off, her breath catching in her throat.
"You have went far enough if it is still too painful, Emily. I am proud of you."
She laughed but there were tears behind the empty sound.
"I want to get this all out now. I will not let that man ruin my life any more than he has. I am not scared of him any more."
Her voice shook but it was resolute. Dr Lecter looked slightly concerned but he nodded for her to continue.
"I was pulling my coat on when he came up behind me. He looked appalled with himself and begged my forgiveness. Oh god I was such a gullible little fool. He said it so…so genuinely. And he offered me a drink to calm myself. Said he would stand away if I felt more comfortable. I thought it had all passed. I still felt slightly flattered that he would be interested in me of all people. His humble little secretary.
I drank the wine he gave me. I remember it tasted expensive. That's the last thingl I remember. When I came to, it was morning and I was inside my own apartment but I had no recollection of getting there. I couldn't remember anything at the time, it was all a foggy daze that hurt to think about.
But over the next few weeks it all came back to me- piece by piece. I couldn't face work, I felt terrible. Ashamed and dirty and sick to my very gut. And then, after about six weeks I went to my doctor about the sickness, which had become physical vomiting- I thought it was still psychological horror even then."
She sighed and looked out the window at a fantastic rusty Baltimore sunset, the autumn hues picked out the fine cheekbones hidden in her weary face.
"And she sat me down and told me I was to have a child."
She gasped quietly with grief and covered her face with her hands. Her next words were muffled but the raw emotion burned through.
"And now I cannot even stand to look at that child because every time I do I just think of that manipulative man and his sick little power games. It is not my daughters fault, doctor, but I hate her. I hate my own child for something she had no control over. I'm a monster."
She broke off with a sob of helpless grief and Dr Lecter felt he could come closer. He put his arm around her thin shoulders and let her cry it all out- all the pain, misery, anger and guilt she had welled up for so long.
"The only monsters in this world are people like James Warwick who think they can use good people like you to achieve their own petty means." Dr Lecter said assertively, pulling her hands gently from her face and holding them very lightly should she want to pull away from a mans touch. She did not. She looked into his deep, dark eyes and felt the first, tiny stirrings of peace as she had on the day she realised she had a tiny being growing inside her.
She sniffed and averted her eyes.
"Then why do I feel such hate for my daughter, doctor? Why can't I be the mother she needs? It has been nearly four years since she was born and still I turn from her affection. She doesn't understand. She's growing up so fast too, what if she thinks it's her fault I can't be around her? She needs support even more than any other child. She can't see, doctor. She was born blind and I have not been there for her, to help her cope in the slightest."
Dr Lecter knelt before her, still holding her hands.
"You are everything she needs, but you have a great, great trauma to overcome before you can devote yourself to her. That is all, Emily. She can expect nothing more of you and she will not.
You will always be her mother and no one can take that from you. Of course her origins cause you painful memories right now and you associate those feelings of pain with her, thus you retaliate with what you describe as hate. You do not hate Gretchen, Emily. You hate James Warwick for abusing you, you hate the torrid, vulgar conditions your only child had to come into the world but you do not hate your daughter, Emily.
You are too strong to let Warwick ruin your relationship with your daughter too. You are strong, Emily."
He let her cry again then, but now she was mourning the destruction of an old phase of her life and slowly she was ready o move onwards and upwards.
What happened that very night to this broken woman who was slowly growing again, Dr Lecter could not have predicted even with his heightened foresight.
It was the sole vent that placed her daughter in the hands of her father. Her father who was so scared of a scandal he paid a Christian boarding school to take her full board from the age of five then on her twelfth birthday took her on a 'surprise visit' to a friend of his' house. This 'friend' was Dr Flaycorps or St. Jonads Hospital for mentally deficient youths. The visit was to reward the good doctor with a great sum of money to declare his only daughter insane and a hazard the public and then he quite happily saw her incarcerated for an indefinite amount of time.
But Dr Lecter was not to know any of this…not yet.
His new cellmate held the other half of the answers to unlock this puzzle. If she would talk again.
Dr Lecter came back to the present time and looked at the young woman. It was so obvious now- the relation. It was almost striking the resemblance between mother and daughter when one chose to look. But one thing Emily Archer had said of her daughter- this woman in front of him now by some quirk of fate or careful planning- stuck in his mind.
Her eyes.
She did have the eyes of her father. The deep olive green with the pale rim around the pupil. Now Dr Lecter realise where he had seen those eyes before.
Looking out of the smug, self satisfied face of Mr James Warwick as he told Dr Lecter, in his respective session with the psychiatrist the sordid details of his deed, not realising then that he had a daughter growing inside his victim.
He also was ignorant, as was Dr Lecter, of the dominant genes he had passed on to her.
He knew of the one giving her those striking eyes with their unusual markings on the iris, identical to his own thus sparking his fear of a scandal if Emily had followed through her threat. But he was utterly unaware, as was Dr Lecter, of the one carrying Negli's aplastic anaemia, a fatal disease of the bone marrow, if not fully diagnosed and treated.
But still, thought Dr Lecter, his eternal humour in the ironies of life surfacing, with all these odds stacked against her, whilst her sight failed even in the early stages of development in the womb, she must have grown and fought and came to be sitting here, on the cold concrete floor of the basement of an asylum for the Criminally Insane. Interesting what quirks of fate can do.
Dr Lecter rose from the table, ripping the letter from James Warwick into eight uniform bits then dropping them, spinning, spinning, sinking into the latrine and he pushed on the flush with satisfaction.
Gretchen looked up at the noise of the water gurgling then sensed his eyes firmly fixed back on her and dropped her head.
"Quirks of fate." Dr Lecter mused to himself quietly.
He moved slowly to her side and kneeled a little way from her.
"I think there is something you have to know. I-"
He broke off and looked over his shoulder as the gate at the top slammed. The oily voice of Chilton reached his ears and he moved back to his desk, watching the space in front of the cell for the arrival of his favourite doctor.
Chilton appeared with three burly orderlies and Barney who was obviously arguing something but it fell on deaf ears and he gave up, throwing Dr Lecter what could have been an apologising look. What was going on here? It certainly was all go, go, go with this young woman in his cell, he though drolly.
"Miss Archer, you need to come with us now." Chilton barked, his eyes quick and bright like a sneaky blackbird peering at another bird's meal, with every intention to steal it the second it looked away.
"Lecter, back up against the bars here." One of the thickset orderlies ordered. Dr Lecter could smell the fear under the authority.
"But of course." He said, pleasantly, as if the orderly had asked the time.
Lecter shot a look at the woman who was looking at the floor determinedly as he backed up against the mesh and felt the usual restraints being pulled on non too gently.
Once he was secured and on his bunk, the orderlies entered and two grabbed Gretchen by either elbow. Dr Lecter could smell a bitter tang of anger at being pulled up and fear at not gaining her balance. He knew from patients that any blind person hates being forcibly moved, especially by such rough men as these. He felt nothing but abstract interest, of course. It must be true what she had said about Warwick paying to get her locked up for the orderlies used no restraints on her and showed no fear of her what so ever. Interesting.
Was this Chiltons' little emotion play going into action? Was he supposed to mourn the young woman's leave like some lovesick child? Oh really, Chilton had forced him to endure some pretty banal tests before but this? This was really scraping the barrel. He was a little glad of the company of another, he had to admit but he was disciplined enough to remain distant and aloof. He had little need for other people, as Chilton should know if he had even the little intellect Dr Lecter credited him with.
Gretchen was pulled out into the corridor and held whilst they loosened his restraints and slammed shut the bars, then she was led up the corridor and out of sight.
He never got to tell her of her mothers problems, he realised and a nanosecond later realised he had truly wanted to. Was it just to gain insight on Emily's life after his incarceration? Dr Lecter freed himself and dumped the restraints into his food carrier, slamming it though harder than normal.