A/N: I want to apologize for how long it's taking me to update. I want to assure everyone that I will eventually finish this story, but it's taking a lot out of me, for some reason. I almost feel like a little bit of my life has been a reflection of these last two circles of hell. When you really immerse yourself in a story like this, at least for me, it can sometimes get lodged in your subconscious and manifest to some extent in real life. Hopefully, in this case, that doesn't continue! Dante's journey doesn't get prettier…

It's also taking a lot out of me because I really do put quite a bit of effort into this, even if it is 'just fanfiction', and to top it off, I'm also working on an original novel, so my energy is split between the two, not to mention work. Anyway, excuses, excuses. What I mean to say is: Apologies for how long my updates take, and further apologies for the relative brevity of this chapter (considering how long some of you have waited). But I went ahead and posted what I've got, because I figured some people would rather have a shorter chapter than none at all.

One last thing to ensure: I do have a relatively specific plan for all of this. It may sometimes seem like I'm wandering a bit (and maybe I do take detours), but overall, I have a map. And…they will see each other again, soon. We're into February now, and April isn't far…

Thank you for your patience and encouragement. I doubt I would continue, otherwise, so you're all as much a part of the making of this monster of a story as me. I hope you enjoy.

Every February, Starling thought of a poem she'd read as an undergraduate. She never meant to, but always ended up seeking it out and reading it at some point, in the long, brittle month. Starling had decided as a child that February was the longest month; not in the count of days, of course. She knew it was a deception of the mind. February was not quite the start of the New Year, as that responsibility was on the confetti-covered shoulders of January. January carried all of the excuses and distractions of intention and champagne, meaningless count-downs and kisses. January knew how to handle the dragging sense of sorrow that comes with the knowledge that anything that has changed has changed nothing at all. February was unarmed, unless you counted Valentine's Day. Which she did not.

She'd considered buying a book with the poem in it, but never did. In the beginning, she wasn't sure why she wouldn't do it, and gave it little thought. Then it occurred to her one night when Mapp asked her what her favorite movie was. She told her it was Citizen Kane, and Mapp had frowned.

"Citizen Kane?" She had wondered out loud. "I wouldn't have guessed."

"Why?" Starling asked.

Mapp shrugged."You don't have it."

"Oh. Yeah, the first time I watched it, I wasn't at my house. I was a kid, and we were visiting relatives for a week. I was bored out of my mind and found that movie in their collection. I watched it over and over again. Any time we visited, I'd watch it. Eventually, my aunt asked me if I wanted to have it, and I told her I didn't. I liked the special-ness of not having it to watch whenever I wanted."

"How old were you?"

Starling pursed her lips and shrugged. "Eight, maybe."

"Rather deep and reflective for an eight year old."

"Yeah, well. I also told my mom once that she had a beard on her front butt. Wabi-sabi."

Starling pulled a blanket over her shoulders. It was early, dark out, and she couldn't sleep. For the last two month, she'd been working with Brigham and his team, along with other agents in Illinois, Colorado and Arizona to track down a victim of child pornography. Some of the other agents had been tracking down the abusers of a multistate child porn ring for years. The break in the case had come recently with the arrest of a man named Roy Barrie, a forty year-old military veteran living with his parents, who had known nothing about their son's activities. They finally tracked down the boy's parents the night before. Starling didn't know how she'd react to seeing the boy in person. She'd seen him before, in pictures. Pictures and videos that she could never, never extract from her mind. She'd thought making it stop, helping to make it stop, might bring her some sleep. It hadn't. The damage was still done, same as the images she could never unsee.

What was worse was that this one man had hundreds of thousands of images stored on hard-drives. This one man. This one child. She felt like she was trying to scoop out the ocean with a spoon. Starling wrapped the blanket around her shoulders tighter and toed on her slippers before getting out of bed. Naturally, couldn't help be reminded of those days down in the dungeon with Dr. Lecter.

No, not the dungeon. It was in Tennessee. She remembered how odd it had been to see him outside of his cage, even in this new one. The prefabricated cage they'd fashioned for him had seemed small in the atrium-like room. Even still, Dr. Lecter had not seemed small at all. Not in the cage and not in the room. He took up all the space wherever he was, he consumed the present. It would seem, Starling reflected, he consumed the past, too.

She thought of his eyes peering over his forearms, that look in his eyes as he hunched over, intentionally shifty, intentionally creepy. He taunted her this way, a reflection of her own deception. Then she'd told him everything, she scooped out her heart for him and he hadn't blinked, not once...

"You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they'd be all right too and you wouldn't wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?"

"Yes. I don't know. Maybe."

"Thank you, Clarice."

He'd seemed so at peace afterwards. She'd fed him better than he'd been fed in years, of course. The obvious question now was, did she still wake up? Of course she did. She thought that this most recent experience, in part, may have been why she had ultimately burned Lecter's letter. My God, what could a bragging, needling letter to her mean in the bigger picture of things? He wasn't killing. She had made sure of that. She'd paid the price as always, and yes – she sometimes wondered if that made her some kind of a whore.

Some kind of a whore, some kind of a…

She hated that word. She hated it so much, even the sound of it without the connotations, without the meaning and heaviness in it. Surely this one thing, this act she performed (and would perform again a finite number of times), could not make her a 'whore'. She was not paid in money. She was paid in lives. Did that change things? Did it matter? Your choices are subject to your judgment, and yours alone.

She realized she was standing in the middle of the dark kitchen in her slippers and pajamas, a blanket trailing behind her like a child. Where was she going? What was she doing? A good question, she answered herself dryly. After some scrounging in the pantry, she found hot chocolate mix. It seemed to fit her attire and mood. Coffee could wait.

In the living room she started to sit in the chair bythe window, as it had seemed like that would paint a pretty picture. It was fucking freezing by the window, though. She moved to the couch and tucked in her knees, cupped the mug beneath her chin and thought about whores and innocence and February. By the time Mapp was up, Starling had made breakfast and a decision. She was going to go to the library. Child, whore, monster—whatever she was at any given moment, she could do that. She could go to the library and read February by Margaret Atwood, and feel okay for awhile.

Starling carried a tumbler in one hand and a lumpy overcoat in the crook of an elbow as she scoured the bookshelves. She'd found Alias Grace, The Handmaid's Tale, The Cat's Eye and a few others, but none with February. She couldn't remember the name of the book. She stood a moment, The Edible Woman still in her hand, searching with tired eyes.

She tensed when a hand appeared in front of her, setting a book on the shelf facing out, in front of her. The title read: After Eden. She turned.

"I thought it might interest you. It's an anthology of anti-love poems," a young man said. She gave a quick, sweeping glance. Younger than her, twenty-three, maybe. Dark hair, long-limbed, tall and skinny. Knobby joints, a bit hairy. Nice smile. Long lashes, confident for his age and stature. Alright.

"I hope that's because I'm standing where I am."

"If you like Atwood…" he said, and shrugged.

"Do you work here?"

"Nope."

"I see."

"But I'm here a lot. Student. What are you looking for?"

"A poem, February. What do you study?"

"English Literature. You want Morning in the Burned House."

"English Literature?" she asked, crouching for a moment, finding the book and straightening up. "You're doomed, you know."

"We all are. Want to get some coffee?"

Starling put back The Edible Woman and tucked Morning in the Burned House under her arm. "Well, I was going to read this."

"You could buy it at a bookstore."

"Yep."

"I have a copy you can borrow."

"I think I'll just read it here, now. Like I planned," she said, with a wry grin.

"Okay. I can catch up studying. Then, do you want to get some coffee?"

"I have a lot to do today."

"Cool. Want to get some coffee?"

"Why don't you try starting out with a name."

He put out a hand, and she looked at it. "I'm James Lanka."

"Clarice Starling," she said, shaking his hand. "I'm going to go sit and read, now."

"Don't forget After Eden. You'll like it." He handed it to her. "If you don't, I won't ask you to get coffee, again."

"And I suppose if I do, you will?"

"Yep. I'll be over at that table," he said, nodding.

An hour later, he sat down across from her, and she looked up. He didn't say anything, but he caught his chin in the palm of his hand, waiting. She sighed and nodded.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay, you liked it? Okay, you'll get a coffee with me?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I'll get coffee with you."

"There's a café across the street. I'll meet you over there."

James Lanka was not Starling's type, but he wasn't her anti-type either, if there was such a thing. She wondered, at a certain point while chatting with him, if she had a type, at all. If she did, she wasn't sure what it was. It was easier to know what she didn't like than what she liked.

Starling didn't consider herself particularly proficient when it came to men and dating and sex, but didn't beat herself up about it. She'd seen some of the girls she'd gone to school with, when she was his age and younger. Some girls were there to learn proficiency at dating and sex. Starling hadn't been. She'd been busy for a long time, busy with what she'd deemed important to her. In those subjects with which she had experience, she was more than proficient. It was not indicative of a problem.

Starling remembered listening to an older girl talking about boys when she was about seventeen. It was her last year at the Lutheran Home. The girl hadn't been talking to Starling, but a group of other girls.

"Boys our age aren't people," the girl was saying. "You can't think of them that way. All they care about is getting their dicks wet, everything else is secondary. They'll do and say whatever they think might get them a chance with you." The girl had flipped her hair over her shoulder, then. Some remote part of Starling had been in awe of that simple gesture. She'd done it once in the mirror, and felt utterly ridiculous. "It's dangerous to think of boys as people," she'd gone on, "Boys aren't people until they're at least thirty, when all that crazy-making testosterone starts to fall. Until then, they're just filled with cum up to their eyeballs."

Starling wondered if there wasn't a tad bit of truth to her words, as vulgar and unfair as they'd been.

James was trying. It was not a very attractive display, but then again, she couldn't entirely blame him. She'd never considered a younger man, but hadn't written it off, either. Generally, she didn't think of men. But it occurred to her that while she couldn't separate young men from the human race as her childhood acquaintance had, younger men were easier to manage. There were probably exceptions to that rule, but she felt it was probably a safe assumption.

For the next six years and two months, her womanhood belonged to Dr. Lecter. She shuddered at the thought, and was glad of the cold as James walked her to her car a couple of hours later. Starling hadn't even decided if she would want to sleep with James Lanka, a fact he was probably acutely aware of. But even if she did decide she wanted to, she knew it was out of the question. So if she was going to waste a little time with someone of the opposite sex, better it be something closer to a boy than a man.

So when, a couple of weeks later, Starling had another free day, she found herself in James Lanka's company. He'd taken her to a dinner, and then they'd walked aimlessly a bit and eventually, he leaned in to kiss her while she stood in front of her car with her door open. She'd pivoted abruptly and found herself sitting in her car. She hadn't planned on dodging him that way, but what was done was very much done. She looked up at him, caught between apologetic and irritable.

"Goodnight! Thanks for dinner," she said, hoping she didn't sound terribly sheepish. He'd bit his lip and looked away nodding and smiling, dryly.

"You're welcome, Clarice. You know…"he'd begun, and Starling braced herself internally, and squeezed the wheel. "In spite of…what just happened, or…I suppose what just didn't happen, I would like to see you again."

Starling swallowed and nodded. "Yeah, yes. Me too."

"When might that be?" he asked, with his head to the side. His posture and the surprisingly confident tone of his voice made her reconsider him.

"I don't know when I'll have another day off…" she said, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel.

"The night is relatively young, you know…"

"I…agree."

"You could get out of the car and get into mine. I wouldn't touch if you asked me not to."

Starling stared at her own white knuckles and then quietly got out of the car. She didn't look at him until she'd slammed the door shut and adjusted her purse. He smiled at her just a little, before leading her across the street.

In his sad little student apartment, they'd made out on his cheap sofa until his roommate came home. Then they'd moved into his room, and done a little more until his other roommate came home. Then Starling had bit his lip and said goodnight.

On Valentine's Day, Mapp came home late, and Starling paused a movie on the television.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

When Mapp was comfortably dressed and armed with tea and a ziploc bag of cookies, she sat next to Starling.

"What are we watching?"

"It's called Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography."

Mapp laughed. "Interesting choice. Why aren't you with your new boy toy? What's his name, again?"

"James."

"Right, James. Shouldn't you and he be having a romantic steak dinner, or sixty-nine-ing, or something?"

"Well, we were going to eat steak and then sixty-nine, but decided it was too cliché. So instead, I'm watching a movie about porn, and he's studying for exams."

"That's really beautiful," Mapp said, putting her feet on the coffee table. "Sugar slop?"

"No thanks."

"You ever get the feeling love is dying?" Mapp asked.

"No."

Mapp swiveled her head around. "I thought I could trust you."

"Love is there, it's just ashamed of itself, sometimes. You have to watch for it, it hides between rocks. It's not all about couple-love, too. Believe me, I've met some parents who love their children. Love them enough they're broken inside if somebody hurts 'em," she said, pausing to take the cookie when Mapp offered it. "So, yeah. It may not always be the kind you're looking for, and it may be sandwiched between hate and cruelty, but it's there. It hides between rocks."

"You think you might head in that direction with Jim Bob?"

"You know his name is James, and not really. But he's good company and he doesn't whine when I leave early."

"That's what we call, 'good enough'. Talked to Crawford today, by the way."

"Oh, yeah?" Starling said with her mouth full.

"Umm-hmm. Said you're taking some time off in April. Why's he know before me?"

"Because he had to okay it this morning," Starling said, chuckling. "You are the most territorial friend I think I've ever had."

"Okay, okay. Sorry."

"No, it's okay. Turns me on, actually."

"Meow," Mapp said, and shut the Ziploc bag. "Should stop."

"Should."

Mapp reopened it. "Had a shitty day."

"No, why?"

Mapp shrugged, "give it a little time. I need to distance myself from it before talking about it."

"Got it."

"Where you going in April?"

Starling paused, watching the scene in the movie. A nude woman in pigtails was bent over on a stage, her ass on display to the laughing men, below. She covered herself with a hand and looked at them from between her legs. "Like a Cracker Jack box with the prize in it, ey?" the woman said.

"Monterey."

"What kind of a movie is this, Starling?"

"It's not a love story, but a film about pornography."

"Smart ass," she said, standing and stretching. From the kitchen, Mapp said something over her shoulder amongst the sounds of cabinets and dishes, and Starling craned her neck.

"What did you say?"

Mapp came into the room holding a tumbler in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other. "I said, that wasn't all Crawford told me."

"Oh," Starling said, eyeing Mapp's provisions. "Is it that kind of night? You had me worried at cookies."

"Oh, it's that kinda night."

"You'll tell me about it, sometime?"

"Yeah. Some time," she said. "About Crawford—oh, do you want a glass?"

"Hit me."

"Alright."

When they were both seated, drinks in hand, Mapp huffed when she sat on the couch and tucked in her bare feet. "Right. Crawford told me about what happened with the Polenta case."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, but he didn't give me details. So they found the husband?"

"Yep. In Colorado, hiding up in the mountains."

"And he did it."

"Yep. He crumbled under questioning, told us where to find Paul's body. Apparently, he nearly caught them again in their hotel room. They managed to get their pants up before he barged in, but it was clear what happened. Paul went out the damn window, but left his things in the room. Richard aimed his weapon at Paul, who was climbing out of the window and Fran flung herself in front of him. I don't think he meant to kill her. He goes to her, has his little moment, 'Oh, what have I done, yadda, yadda.' Meanwhile, Richard nearly escapes. He followed him all the way to Nevada before catching up with him."

"Right. Well, what I heard was that Richard asked to speak with you, after he was in custody."

"Yeah. He said I was the only person he knew of in the country who had spoken with his father-in-law."

"So what happened?"

"I went. We talked," Starling said, pausing to take a sip of the drink. "That's a damn good mojito. Anyway, he asked me to relay a message. Basically, that he really did love Fran. He wanted him to know he hadn't meant to kill her."

"That's it?"

"That, and he left me with a special little sentiment," she said, sighing. "He said, 'I may rot in prison, but my traitor of a brother and whore of a wife will burn in hell for eternity.'"

"And some people say love is dead."

The same stripper on the television screen was in an interview, now. She wore a comfortable sweater and jeans, the camera from behind the interviewer's head.

"It's a very honest arena," the woman was saying. "They may be guilt-ridden and this and that," she said, her hand making the gestures of a politician, "but they certainly act on a very animal level."

"Fair enough," was Mapp's response. "We're animals, at the end of the day."

Starling blew air out of her pursed lips, making pieces of her hair flutter around her face, and she let her head fall back. We're animals at the end of the day. Right.

Dr. Lecter was pleased with the location he'd chosen for his upcoming visit with Clarice Starling. The images of the scene danced in his mind's eye the whole trip back into Austria, and even on into the night after arriving home. It would be cold, too. He liked that. It would suit his purposes. They would have solitude as well, that was for certain. Their complete isolation was key.

He found himself sitting at his desk after unpacking and showering. He walked out of the bathroom trailing a bit of steam into the chilly hallway. His stationary was still there, and he wondered what a letter from Clarice might look like.

He sat down slowly, ignoring the phone when it first began to ring. He was in casual slacks and socks, for the cold floor, but he hadn't put a shirt on yet. He stood erect, his shoulders still slick and a little rosy from the hot water and steam. The cold air felt good, if not a little biting. Perhaps that would be the nature of a letter from Starling, he mused. He wondered if she'd ever return his letters, as he gazed down at the photo of her he'd clipped from a tabloid.

She had apparently been investigating a missing federal official, but that was clearly a bit of a euphemism. What she'd been doing was covering a media-frenzied double murder involving a prolific business man's infamously adulterous daughter. There was a picture of the daughter too, but Dr. Lecter only glanced at it, as well as the photo of the perpetrator, now in custody.

"They will burn in hell for eternity!" the tabloid exaggerated a quote.

The photo of Starling was small, and she stood flanked between two other agents. After cutting out her image, it was small even in the palm of his hand. He picked it up and put it there now as he slowly sat, looking at her face cradled in his hand.

He picked up the ringing phone on the fifth ring.

"Dr. Boucher."

"Herr Doctor, it's Etienne. I know you said I couldn't reach you for a time, but…"

"What is it?"

"Well, something's happened."

"Go on."

"Well, they've caught each other, the Strobls."

"And?"

"It was rather nasty."

"Did you blackmail them?"

"Yes," she said hesitantly. It was odd to hear the word said out loud, in such casual conversation.

"How much did you ask for?"

"Two hundred thousand," Etienne said, her voice softened.

"You could have asked for three."

"I think so, too. They agreed very quickly. And asked me what I would do with it."

"What will you do with it?"

"I'm going to get my PhD."

"Good girl. What else?"

"Well…there's been a bit of a…tragedy."

"Ah. Please go on."

"Alright, let me explain what happened."

What Etienne told Dr. Lecter began with Joseph Strobl catching his wife bent over his desk in front of Adrian Baur. Scrambling, stuttering and red faces ensued. When Joseph called Adrian a bottom-feeding home wrecker, Adrian proclaimed to everyone that he had only done it to practice for Valerie. Joseph, in turn, delighted in confessing that he had been sleeping with Valerie. Valerie, who stood nearby in the hallway came forward, and confessed that she was a prostitute. When a furious Joseph demanded to know who had paid her, she only shrugged and pursed her lips.

At this point, Etienne made her appearance from the side door and, taking a look at everyone, announced her intentions. Joseph called his wife a stupid whore, who called Etienne a conniving snake, who smiled at an indifferent Valerie, while a shocked and humiliated Adrian stared slack-jawed at the divan.

Upon hearing all of this, Rita Steiner had an extreme reaction. She had apparently been spending time with Adrian in a platonic fashion, and had fallen in love with him. It had also turned out, to everyone's shock besides Dr. Lecter's, that Rita had been taking antidepressants and antipsychotics to treat psychotic depression. Wagner found her dead bowed over her oven door three days before Dr. Lecter's return to Vienna.

"You should go and see him. He hasn't seen anybody."

"Yes, I'll go at once."

"Herr Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"I suppose I should say thank you. It feels quite dirty to say it now, after what's happened. But gratitude is still in order. So, thank you."

"You're quite welcome, Frau Alorie. I'm sure we'll be in touch. Goodbye, now."

"Goodbye."

He hung up the phone without looking. His eyes were still focused on Starling's face. He was not entirely comfortable with how often he'd been thinking of her. He was not entirely comfortable with the ways he was thinking of her.

Dr. Lecter had only been to Wagner's home three times. After he'd knocked on the door for several minutes, he pulled out a customized house key and a small screw driver. He inserted the key into the lock and gave it ten taps, before it opened.

Inside, there was music playing from somewhere in the house. Wagner's home was not as large as his own, but it was big enough that he was not certain from which direction it was coming.

The stairs greeted him in the foray, which split into two directions. To the left was a living room connecting to a kitchen and dining room. To the right was a study, connecting to a wet bar and the dining room. He went upstairs, stopping at the top and listened. Here, there was a living room with a large television, four bedrooms and a bathroom, and a second staircase at the end of the hall which lead down to the kitchen.

On the third story, there was a single, large bedroom with a billiards table, a small bed, and a bathroom.

Dr. Lecter walked down the hall to the third floor staircase and placed a hand on the banister. He could hear a dog barking. The staircase wound around until he faced west, and he peered up at the top. The door was cracked open with a light on. The music grew in volume. He'd recognized it before, but now, he moved his hand along with it in the air, keeping count like a conductor. It was Masonic Funeral Music in C minor by Mozart.

Dr. Lecter's hand in the stairwell light, moving back and forth, palm up, palm down, his foot making one of the steps creak, and the dog barking, barking barking. When he pushed open the door, he stood at the top a moment, one hand at his back, the other still conducting the music as he took in the scene.

The little black dog on the floor in the middle of the room, skipping from one side of a tipped footstool to the other, yipping and whining and now looking at Dr. Lecter and barking at him. Wagner himself was hanging from a good, smooth piece of nylon rope, which he'd expertly tied to the beam above. Unfortunately for Wagner, he had not given himself a good drop; therefore his neck had not broken. Instead, he'd hung there for about eight long, painful, anxiety-stricken minutes and died from hypoxia causing cardiac arrest. His face was pale and slightly swollen, with a bit of saliva leaking from his mouth. Dr. Lecter stayed where he was until the piece ended.

He seemed to notice the dog, then. He took a knee and pulled out a bag with some leftover pieces of ham, and offered one to the panicked dog. The dog sniffed, looking at Lecter, and then looked back at its recently deceased master, barking, barking, then sniffing, sniffing. He came forward, and Dr. Lecter scratched his head while he ate. He examined the collar on the dog's neck. It read: Cerberus.

"A good name," said Dr. Lecter. He smiled at the dog, and gave him another piece of ham. Dr. Lecter laughed, looking back at Wagner, his eyes bulging slightly, glassy and empty.