Chapter Text
Morning on the Chesapeake. Clarice Starling sits on the shoreline. She is watching the light play on the water, which laps inches from her feet. She has spent a lot of time watching points of light recently, and now there are thousands and they are all moving at once, and she is not in a dark room.
She has always done her best thinking outside, and finds great solace in it now. Too many of Clarice Starling’s big decisions have been made in cramped and dark places; dungeons and asylums, the backs of SWAT vans, corridors of government buildings and sad little laundry rooms.
She has a very big decision to make now, maybe the biggest. It's pleasant to be able to make it with a view.
She hadn’t seen Hannibal Lecter that morning, but she knew he was awake. She’d heard him in the kitchen when she’d come downstairs, and had smelt something pleasant being cooked.
If she’d heard him, she knew that he’d certainly heard her.
Curious that he hadn’t woken her... He’d done so almost every morning since her arrival at the Chesapeake house; often she’d wake to his voice, slowly coaxing her from sleep, and would find a breakfast tray placed on her lap, and warm cocoa in a mug on the bedside. “Routine,” she could remember he’d told her, “will be important for you.”
So why had he let her wake on her own terms today? And why had he not yet come to find her? She supposed he knew she needed some space, after the previous evening.
Last night. Hmmm. Clarice couldn’t think of that yet. She couldn't quite face last night's dinner without the absurd impulse to laugh, and she certainly couldn't think of dessert and drinks afterwards without the equally avoidant urge to dive into the lapping bay and let the cold water clear her mind.
She could, however, face the thought of what had happened afterwards. Of him rising from the floor before her, hair a little less tame than she was used to seeing it, eyes perhaps a little wilder, too. And then him saying, “You’re drunk, Clarice. And high. It wouldn’t do for us to take this further tonight. We will speak in the morning. Would you like a warm drink?”
She’d turned down the offer, she could recall, and had refused his suggestion that he see her upstairs. She was grateful that he’d not pushed the issue, even as she’d tucked herself back into her dress and had risen on unsteady feet.
She wasn’t sure it would’ve been appropriate for him to have entered her room, even if only to help her into bed. The score between them had shifted, he was no longer sharing her space as her attending physician. What was he now? That was yet to be decided.
“I have a peace offering.”
Starling didn’t startle, but the sound of his voice did cut through her thoughts rather abruptly, and she turned quickly.
He stood in the open mouth of the house’s back door, arms loose at his sides. He stood as he always did, poised and ever the gentleman, even in fairly casual dress; dark trousers, a shirt with the sleeves rolled, socks but no shoes.
She wondered how long he’d been standing there. She was almost used to his gaze now, it no longer tingled when his eyes were on her.
“I wasn’t aware we were at war,” Starling replied after a beat, and found pleasure in his answering smile. She’d never seen him in the sunlight like this, she realised. Only ever in dark places; the dungeon, and then his holding cell, and then Mason’s barn after that, and the dimly lit rooms of the Chesapeake house since.
“Perhaps we aren’t. You are at war with yourself, though. You seem preoccupied.”
“I have a lot to think about.”
He nodded. “We’ll get to that in time. For now, breakfast?” He inclined his head slightly, indicating inside.
Starling felt a small and sudden spike of alarm at the thought of eating at the dinner table again. She supposed it showed on her face, because he said, “we’ll eat on the patio if you’d like. You can keep your view.”
Calm again. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
Dr Lecter nodded, and retreated into the house.
He was back ten minutes later, and was pleased to find Clarice sitting at the patio table with her legs tucked under her. She had a tendency to curl up wherever she sat, not unlike a cat- it wouldn’t be polite at a dinner table but elsewhere he found it charming.
“I suppose,” he started to speak as he placed a plate before her, then one for himself, and he had also brought a small basket of thinly sliced ficelle. “The transition now may come as a shock. I’ve prepared a light breakfast. You might find you feel a little sickly for a short time, especially after you eat now. It’s just the medicine making its way out of your system, nothing more. It’s been a constant for about a fortnight, it’s natural that you might experience some withdrawals.”
“What is this?” she asked.
“Soft scrambled eggs. There’s some chive cream, too. It’s light enough that it won’t overwhelm your digestive system.”
Starling nodded, took a bite, and hummed to herself. She didn’t need to tell him that it was very good. Instead, she asked, “what were you giving me?”
They hadn’t discussed directly the nature of how he’d been treating her; the drugs he’d been administering were an unspoken condition. She wondered if he’d deflect. To her relief, he did not.
“Oh, a small cocktail of things, at various times,” he said after a bite of eggs. “Dalmane, or flurazepam, for your mood, and to aid in your sleep and relaxation. I switched to frequent dosages of Ambien this week. The flurazepam was making you drowsy in the mornings.” Another bite. He spoke casually, as if he were describing the weather. “I used Amobarbital during our talks. It helps lower inhibitions, it made discussing your problems easier for you- without restraint or anxiety. I’ve been tapering the dosage of that one, slowly. The withdrawal is nasty if stopped abruptly, and can still be jarring when stopped otherwise. How are you feeling?”
“I feel fine, to be honest. More alert,” Starling said. “You were administering these intravenously?”
“Correct.”
“There’s no bruising,” she spared a glance down at her arms.
“I was very careful, and alternated injection sites. I wouldn’t stand to hurt you.”
“But you can stand to drug me. And dig around in my head.”
“You’re all the better for it.”
That sparked anger in her. It was the first time she’d felt anger that way, spiky and sharp, in a while. The emotion came with a certain level of clarity - Starling didn’t try to school her tone when she said, “I didn’t ask for it.”
“Just as a person does not ask to be taken to a hospital and treated when they are critically wounded. And yet, assuming they survive, they are all the better for it,” Dr Lecter insisted. He was glad to hear the bite in Clarice’s voice. It meant she was herself.
She couldn’t deny that she felt different. And she couldn’t say with certainty that it was a bad thing. A part of her felt lighter, though it was… implacable. That feeling after a head cold when the sinuses clear and you can breathe again, though your body has already forgotten the feeling of being blocked.
Starling deliberately and consciously brought forth thoughts of her father, then. It is not something she’s ever done before; memories of him have haunted and saddened her for as long as she could recall, but never willingly. His memory doesn’t sting her now, and his vision comes to her head easily. Hm.
“What about Krendler?” She asked, after taking a bite of the food. She regretted it immediately, because the delicious egg suddenly tasted slightly sour in her mouth.
“He’s gone, Clarice. Gone away, like the drugs and the bad dreams. That’s an old chapter now.”
“Not so old,” and then slightly pointedly, “I can still taste him.”
Dr Lecter smiled. Her tone was almost petulant, though he supposed some indignance was justified. “Are you sure, Clarice? The sorbet was intended to cleanse the palate. And the wine was very sweet. For a man of such little substance, his frontal lobe certainly packed a punch, it seems.”
Starling swallowed at his joke. There was the anger again. Her cutlery went down, and she gave him her level gaze.
After a long pause, she said, “Dr Lecter, I don’t want to eat people. I’m not a cannibal.” He blinked, and she went on. “Maybe I’ve discovered things recently. Perhaps I have changed in a way. Ways I don’t think I’m able to place quite yet. But that hasn’t changed. Don’t make me do that again.”
He let her sit with her words, went as far as to take another bite of food, and then gave her his full attention.
“Consuming Paul Krendler had nothing to do with cannibalism, Clarice. That was simply an incidental condition. Our dinner had everything to do with your own complete self-sufficiency, and the purging of old ghosts. The act of eating him was to the advancement of your healing as varnishing a canvas is to finishing a painting. Just one motion in a long succession of other motions. Not something to dwell on, if you don’t wish to. Though it will always be a foundation. I think you’re able to live with that- live with the act. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have partaken. You were under the influence, yes, but of nothing more than relatively weak barbiturates. You were beyond yourself, but still emphatically yourself."
“That doesn’t comfort me, doctor. If anything, I'm disturbed. Disturbed by what that makes me.”
“I don’t intend to comfort you. That would be an insult to your intelligence. What happened doesn't make you anything you’re not, my dear. It doesn’t change you.” He considered her at the table, her legs tucked up, her eyes and hair bright and limned by the sun. “You can’t define a person entirely from one action. When you look at me, do you think ‘cannibal’?”
“No,” Clarice answered, not having to think.
“Okay. Do you think ‘painter,’ then? Or ‘musician’? Hannibal the artist? I paint, and play music, and write, so is that what I am?”
“No.”
“I don’t look at you and think ‘FBI agent,’ Clarice. I don’t think ‘marksman.’ And I certainly don’t look at you and think ‘cannibal’.”
She was almost nervous to ask. “What do you think when you look at me?”
His eyes mapped her face. His voice was lower when he next spoke. “I think ‘Clarice’. All that you are. You are so many things, but above all else you are ‘Clarice’. You are a warrior. You are steady in yourself.” He angled his head slightly. Starling had the distinct sense that he wanted to reach across the table and take her hand. He resisted. “I hope you know that I will never, ever aim to change that. I hope it gives you peace. The masters you’ve served have tried to change you, but you didn’t bend to them. That’s why you're here with me.”
A beat, and he turned his gaze back down to the food, working a healthy portion onto his fork. “No, I don’t wish to alter you, or bend you, or warp you. I only want the absolute best that can possibly be given to you.” He ate. As he did, he wondered if her firearm was on her person.
“If there ever comes I time I try to alter who you are, Clarice, if you ever sense that my intentions towards you are to stifle you- I hope you aim true.”
He’d finished his eggs. She’d barely touched hers. Usually, Dr Lecter would stay and talk whilst she ate, but today he stood up, smiled warmly at her, and then turned back into the house.
Starling watched him go. Her gun was upstairs, locked in her bedside drawer where it had been since her arrival.