Clarice hears a nurse say the hospital is overcrowded that night, but she can't help but feel a little sentimental about the fact that they place Clarice and Ardelia in the same hospital room. A room that would almost do from being more sterile and lifeless—the wallpaper peels in the edges, the stand with Clarice's IV on it browning where the pieces meet. But as Clarice raises her sore wrist, there's a line pumping painkillers she can only imagine she really needs, so there's not much to complain about.
She tries to survey the room as a whole, but the moment she looks around, Jack slumped against a wall asleep, a foam coffee cup sitting on a plastic table next to him, it's all she can focus on.
Clarice never thought she'd miss the way she felt after Jamie Gumb's house, when the only medicine she needed was a bit of Neosporin for the cut on her cheek and a shock back to reality of what she'd done. There wasn't any of the mental strain this time, not even now, with the drugs parting way for her full consciousness. No, she remembers everything—thinking she was going to save Hannibal Lecter in the barn, thinking Ardelia was dead, Hollins crushing her and shooting her, Lecter slitting his throat. Clarice can feel it in her, that Hollins would've died regardless of Lecter's intervention. That she has killed again. But something feels different about it.
She isn't sure if it's good or bad that it feels different this time.
Jack stirs, seemingly more discombobulated than Clarice was. They make eye contact, with Clarice offering a weak smile first. Jack rises out of his seat, picking up the seat and gently setting it at her side.
"How're those drugs, Starling?" he asks, smiling. His voice is low, although Clarice suspects Ardelia may be out cold if she's not already awake.
"Good," she replies. She suspects even a joke like that won't be tolerable anywhere outside of this room for as long as she's healing.
"I'll keep repeating this as you taper off, but you're going to be off the streets for a while. Don't give me grief about it."
She glances down at her leg, bandaged to all hell. It's just enough connection back to her body to notice how she's cautious about how she breathes, shallow where she'd usually be breathing deeper. She's suspended in the false comfort of the pain meds and sooner rather than later, all she'll have to fight the broken rib pain is ibuprofen.
So, no, walking around really isn't going to be on the agenda.
"Okay," she says.
"You've got guts, and I admire that," Jack continues, sitting up tall. All business. "But we aren't an agency of vigilantes. We didn't do anything when you saved Catherine, but it clearly set a precedent. You're suspended to desk duty once you're back in, any switch subject to review."
Clarice's head feels fuzzy, but somehow the implication of what Jack's saying comes across as clear as if they were together any day of work.
She wasn't fired, this isn't quite like when she got suspended from Quantico, but she was close. Clarice hears the way Jack fought for her in his voice. Paul Krendler, asshole's, face comes to mind. She wonders if Jack kept her from professional consequences back during the Buffalo Bill times.
But she isn't the hothead, desperate to prove her own worth and silence nightmares in her head anymore. Instead of Lecter's face as the blood-spattered rancher from her childhood, she sees Vanessa's face. Vanessa, who never wanted anyone involved in a crime she committed. Vanessa, who cared so deeply about her friends. Vanessa, who would be dead if not for what Clarice, Ardelia, and Lecter did.
Vanessa is alive. But—Clarice shoots a glance Ardelia's way—someone Clarice loved had to suffer for it to happen. It should've never gone down that way. If Clarice hadn't been so deep in her own head, Ardelia may have never been hurt. Jack would've had time to arrive with backup, Hollins could've been arrested, and Clarice could be apologizing to Ardelia over arrest paperwork. Vanessa would be alive whether she did it the protocol way or not.
Maybe Catherine was a special case, a hero's rare chance at basking in bravery. But this was her job. Playing hero wasn't sustainable, not if she wanted to keep saving lives.
"I understand," Clarice says.
But she doesn't look at Jack. She stares at Ardelia, sleeping stock still. Not how Ardelia ever slept when they shared a bed. Clarice still doesn't know what Ardelia's recovery will be like, where the bullet entered her body and what damage it did. But none of it had to happen.
And, Clarice realizes with a shock of cold in her gut, not the only consequence to what happened.
"Jack," Clarice says, whipping her neck back toward Jack so fast she's dizzy, "Ardelia had nothing to do with this. She was following after me. She thought I was being reckless. She didn't mean to overstep or impede the investigation. Please tell Fischer that."
Jack doesn't look at Ardelia. He looks to Clarice, silent as his jaw flexes and relaxes. Clarice's heart speeds in her aching, broken chest. Ardelia's worked too hard to have it all come undone because of something Clarice can coast as a white woman. It can't be Ardelia's legacy, not when she's already done so much incredible work and has so much of it to still do in the future.
"Clarice, is that what happened? I can't lie to—"
Tears that hurt more than any injury Hollins blasted onto her burn in her eyes. "You have to." She swallows. "I'll resign right now if you don't."
"Clarice, you're—"
"Completely level-headed."
Ardelia won't sacrifice anything else for her.
She allows herself to imagine it, the consequences for what just slipped out of her mouth. Ever since her dad died, all she's ever imagined was working up to the FBI. She threw away a proper childhood, proper adolescence, proper adulthood so she could rise to the occasion. Working this job has been the only thing that let her sleep at night. It gave her Jack, it gave her Ardelia. It gave her Lecter, for whatever that's worth.
But it's also the reason she couldn't sleep for almost half a year. The reason she knows what human skin on a mannequin looks like, what kerosine in a human body smells like. She saves women at the expense of watching so, so many not be saved in time. There will only continue to be bureaucratic hurdles she can't climb over, piggish bosses and coworkers, someone new to hit on her or call her a dyke and nothing beyond that.
Maybe quitting would be okay.
Jack sighs. "Okay. Fine." Jack stands up. "Get some rest."
And as Clarice watches Jack walk away, she almost wishes—for a moment, anyway—that she had quit.
#
Perhaps the pain medication is stronger than Clarice initially took it for. She awakens from a block of time she's too exhausted to even try to remember. A blur somewhere after Jack left, now cinched to the buzzing of the TV and rays of sunlight peeking through the shades. The tendrils of pain are just beginning to take hold of her chest and leg. A bearable pain, but something she can see slipping out of hand as fast as a hidden drop off in a ravine.
She looks over, though, and Ardelia's opened eyes take a bit of it away.
"Hey, you," she says.
"Hey," Clarice replies.
"I dunno about this configuration," Ardelia says. "It's very Brady Bunch."
Clarice chuckles, but it sends a surprising bolt of pain through her. It'll have to be the last time Ardelia cracks any one liners for a while. "If you even let me back into our old arrangement."
Ardelia shrugs. "The sharing a bed seems more practical than anything. I think we both have a ways to go with the sex, though." There's no telling the way that makes the butterflies inside Clarice flutter. "This is the bigot's last laugh, isn't it? No gay sex for like two months."
"You still want that? After all I've put you through?" Clarice looks Ardelia up and down. "Including this?"
"Well, I don't know how often I'll find someone who'll throw away her dream job just so I can keep mine."
Ardelia's words jerk in her heart. "You were awake."
"Barely. I'm glad I caught that, though." Ardelia pauses. "Once the anger started wearing off, I started looking at the bigger picture. You'd lied, but were you a liar, you know. And I thought back on everything we've been through together, the connection we share, how proud I feel to be around you and how proud you look around me. I think you got too far in your head and put your eggs in the wrong basket. But," she flashes a smile, "I guess whatever you did with Hannibal Lecter did also get someone to staunch my wound so I didn't die on some bigot's kitchen floor. So, even the cannibal has his advantages."
"I won't talk to him anymore," Clarice says, the words sputtering out like she's a guilty teenager again.
"I don't care if you talk to Hannibal Lecter anymore. I just want you—"
"I choose you," Clarice says. "Every decision I make from now on, I choose you." She exhales. "I'm going to take the desk assignment seriously, find that therapist. I don't want my purpose to be entirely wrapped up in the FBI. Helping people, making people feel a little less alone, sure, but—"
Ardelia gasps out a laugh. "Did you just say you weren't married to the FBI?" All Clarice can do is nod, even if her answer is maybe. "Well hot damn, Clarice, let's both get healed and see what we can do with some actual work-life balance."
"I love you," Clarice says.
She reaches her hand into the abyss between their beds. This move doesn't hurt the way the others hurt.
"I love you too."
Ardelia reaches her hand out too.
Their fingers brush. It feels as good as any kiss could feel.
Their fingers brush and Clarice closes her eyes. Dr. Lecter is still out, with apparently a man that everyone thinks is dead. Five people died because of a bigoted bar owner seeking revenge. One arsonist is still alive, and vulnerable, and Clarice is going to have to grapple with whether or not Vanessa's served justice by living with what she helped unleash or if it's her duty to turn her in. But regardless, Vanessa's alive. Vanessa's alive and so is Catherine Martin. She still has the job she's been working toward since her dad died, even if it's taken a different form now. She'll never be able to get her coworkers to stop seeing her a certain way, even if that part of herself has brought her Ardelia. When she and Ardelia are released from his hospital, they'll sleep in the same bed again. Clarice will be able to rest.
Even though all she can imagine now is how deeply she wishes she could rest in this bed, two feet from an Ardelia healing too, unburdened by her.
Maybe that'll be possible, one day.