After that night at the lakehouse, Clarice Starling had remained suspended from duty for a little over a month, whilst those who had assigned her back to the Lecter case deliberated on whether or not she might have been part of the assault on Paul Krendler.
When they found no evidence of such, they moved on to their exploration of how Lecter might have gotten away. Again, their efforts to uncover her involvement proved fruitless and as such, she was reinstated.
Beyond this, nobody questioned the nature of her relationship with Hannibal Lecter.
Nobody ever asked her whether she had had sex with him. Nor did anybody question the paternity of her baby.
It would have been easier if they had.
Instead, they had slowly but surely demoted her from Special Agent to glorified secretary. It was, they had claimed, due to the pregnancy. But Clarice knew better than that.
When she returned from her short but less-than-thrilling maternity leave, she did so in another state.
Yet no matter where she moved, things didn't improve and she quickly learnt that they never would – within the Bureau, she would always be Clarice Starling: The One That Let Lecter Get Away. Her colleagues weren't interested in her achievements, or her abilities – they were only interested in her relationship with Hannibal Lecter and all that had gone before.
So she had given up. She had taken the office admin and the dull raids, the shifts nobody else wanted. It had become a grim routine, and now, sitting in the shadows of her lounge with the flashing images of the television set providing the only source of light, Clarice wondered when she had stopped enjoying her job. When she had stopped enjoying life.
Had she ever started?
Taking another sip of the bourbon she knew she shouldn't be drinking, she glanced outside.
In another hour, the sun would set.
Clarice worried her lower lip, her thoughts returning to Hannibal Lecter – to how it had felt to rest her head against his shoulder, how it had felt to have his lips against her own.
How it had felt to see him with their daughter.
Until him, nobody had seen her – really seen her – in a long time. Nobody had looked.
Standing up, Clarice headed upstairs, stopping in the doorway of Everleigh's bedroom.
The girl was tucked up in bed, though Clarice could see that she was lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
Quietly, she moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside her.
"Watcha doin'?" she asked, softly.
Everleigh shrugged.
A pause.
"Tell me a story," the child whispered.
Clarice glanced at her, caught off guard – she couldn't recall a time she had ever read her daughter a story, let alone been asked to make one up.
"Um…" she began, settling on the bed beside her and propping herself up with one arm.
Everleigh waited patiently.
"Well… once upon a time…" she started.
"You can do better than that," her daughter told her, matter-of-factly.
Clarice rose an eyebrow. "I haven't even started yet, thanks. So, once upon a time, there was a boy…"
"Let me guess, a prince?" she rolled her eyes.
"You want this story or not?" her mother asked, though there was no irritation in her voice. "He wasn't a prince. He was an ordinary boy, who lived on the other side of the world from here."
"Where did he live?"
"Lithuania," Clarice told her.
Everleigh gave her a curious look. "Interesting choice."
"Thank you. The boy had a happy life, with his parents and his sister. Until German troops invaded his hometown," she continued.
The child frowned. "Why'd they do that?"
"Well, it was World War Two," Clarice explained hoping Everleigh wouldn't press the point any further, her knowledge of the historical severely limited. "The boy's mother and father were killed. And then his sister, too."
"This is pretty morbid, you know?" she commented. "What happened to the boy?"
"He was left alone. Nobody really knows where he went after it happened, but he survived and he grew into a man. But he was angry and hurt by everythin' that had happened, so he became very troubled," she continued. "That meant that he did some pretty bad things himself."
"What kinds of things?"
Clarice shrugged. "Lots of things, not very nice things… things that hurt other people. This went on for quite a long time before he was finally caught."
"Was he sent to prison?"
"In a way. He was sent to a hospital for prisoners that are considered… insane," she told her, wondering how on earth this had become her life. "It wasn't a very nice place. But the funny thing was, the man wasn't at all like the other prisoners."
"How come?"
"Well, to most people that met him… he didn't seem crazy at all. He was really, really clever," Clarice told her. "Some years later, while the man was locked up in the hospital, there was another man all the way out in Ohio who was doin' some pretty bad things too."
"Like what?"
"He was taking girls and hurtin' them… killin' them," she said, deciding her daughter could handle it.
Everleigh pulled a face. "What kind of bedtime story is this?"
Amused, Clarice reached out a hand and stroked the child's hair from her face. "Shush and listen. The police and the FBI were havin' a real hard time catchin' this guy, and they thought the man in the hospital might be able to help them. But he wouldn't talk to them."
"Why not?"
"He didn't trust them. So instead, they sent a young woman – a student – in to try and speak with him. They thought that he might be able to tell them some stuff about this guy that would lead them to him," she said.
"Because he was so clever?"
Clarice nodded.
"Did he help her?" Everleigh asked.
"Not straight away. It took time, work… But eventually, he did. He helped her a lot. And he became very fond of her…"
"Was she fond of him too?"
Clarice hesitated before responding.
"Yeah, I guess she was."
"What happened to the man?" Everleigh asked.
"Well… while he was helpin' the young woman, he managed to escape," she said.
"Where'd he go?"
"Nobody knew – the police searched for him, but he totally disappeared."
Everleigh frowned. "What about the woman? Didn't she see him again?"
"Not for a long time. But eventually, he came back to help her again," Clarice told her.
"Why'd she need help?"
"She had to make a pretty tough choice at work… she had to do somethin' horrible to protect herself. After that, her bosses weren't very nice to her. She had a hard time," Clarice said, softly. "The man thought it was unfair, so he came back to teach them a lesson."
"Was she happy to see him?" Everleigh asked.
"Not at first… but then she changed her mind."
"How come?"
"Because… she saw all of the things that he was willing to do for her… and she knew that… that he loved her," she said.
"So what happened?" the child pressed, fully invested.
"Well… they had a baby."
"Did they get married?"
"No. Don't forget, the police were still looking everywhere for the man, so he couldn't stick around," Clarice told her. "He had to leave them."
"Was the baby a boy or a girl?" Everleigh asked.
"It was a little girl."
"And he didn't ever get to see her?" she asked, looking a little saddened.
"Well, the woman didn't think he ever would… he didn't even know about the baby," she said. "But one day, a few years later, he came back to see her again."
"Wasn't she angry at him? For the bad things he did? And for leaving her?"
"A bit. But even though the man hadn't told her himself, don't forget that she knew about everything that had happened to him when he was a little boy. So she tried to understand," Clarice said.
"But if he didn't tell her, how did she know those things?" she frowned.
"She worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation – they can find out anything," Clarice told her with a wry smile.
For a moment, the child's endless stream of questions ceased. Slowly, she sat up, large blue eyes searching her mother's.
"What happened to the man and woman, and the little girl?" she whispered earnestly, with all the intellect of the man who had helped to create her. "Did they live happily ever after?"
Clarice paused before she responded. When she did, she did so with complete honesty.
"I don't know."
