silverusagi

Word Count: 3600
Genre: Slash, Drama
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence

Summary: Sequel to When the Devil Smiles Back. Three years after Hannibal Lecter’s escape in Memphis, Clarice profiles Will Graham. From there, nothing at all goes as expected.

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5

Dr. Lecter left her handcuffed to the bed again.

However, he returned shortly with his bag. His sleeves were rolled up, and he walked around the room to Will’s side.

Sitting on the edge of the bed next to Will, he opened the bag. Clarice watched as he checked Will’s pupils with a penlight and then took his pulse. She was honestly surprised she was here for this. It seemed personal in a strange way, even though Dr. Lecter’s demeanor was nothing but clinical.

He obviously wasn’t troubled by her presence at all, and simply went about his business. If Will were awake, she suspected Dr. Lecter would have wanted privacy to talk, but he saw nothing objectionable about changing a few bandages with her in the room.

Clarice suddenly felt very tired—tired of her day, tired of her situation, and certainly tired of his company. Her initial anxiety was long gone, and she felt like she’d left the tension of their dinner conversation at the table. Now she just felt drained.

She watched vacantly as Dr. Lecter took out more supplies from his bag.

When he took out a vial and began to fill a needle, Clarice couldn’t help asking, “What are you giving him?”

“What he asked me to,” Dr. Lecter said, testing the needle. “Another dose will allow him to rest easily until morning.” He injected it into Will’s arm with a practiced hand.

Clarice swallowed. “And what are you going to give me tomorrow?”

“Nothing,” he said, glancing at her. The corners of his mouth twisted up as he said, “Drug use should always be done under a doctor’s supervision. Though on a more practical note, nothing I have would be sufficient at a single dose to allow us the time necessary to move beyond the purview of the FBI. When Will and I leave, you’ll be restrained, nothing more.”

She was grudgingly pleased that he wasn’t going to drug her again, but it wasn’t encouraging to hear that she was going to be left handcuffed. Clarice felt a small bubble of the overwhelming panic that had gripped her when she’d thought Will was leaving her alone and restrained. If Dr. Lecter was satisfied at leaving her conscious but confined, it meant he was confident she wouldn’t be able to get free and alert anyone to their presence.

That begged the question of how she was to get free at all.

“How long do you expect me to be here?” Clarice asked, barely managing to choose the indirect route to what she really wanted to know, instead of simply blurting out her real question.

“When do you imagine you’ll be missed?” he countered.

Clarice didn’t have to imagine it; she had already considered it at length after Will had left her in the bathroom. “It might seem unusual that I don’t answer my phone by Sunday, but no one will worry until Monday morning when I don’t show up for work and don’t call in. By afternoon at latest, someone will realize something is wrong.”

Ardelia would realize something was wrong. She would check the apartment; she would go to Crawford.

“They will trace your phone,” Dr. Lecter said. “And they will find it. By the time emergency services are dispatched to this location, nearly a day will have passed. Will and I will be long gone.” He smiled to himself.

“Why didn’t I think of that,” she said dully. It was a simple solution. Will would have turned off her phone, but letting someone find her through it was as simple as turning it back on. Even if the phone wasn’t on, if someone traced it right now, it would show this place as her last location. It was due to her own horrible judgment that no one would be looking for her until Monday.

Dr. Lecter pulled back the quilt and sheet and began slowly un-taping the bandages on Will’s stomach. “You said no one knew where you were,” he said, his tone conversational, his focus on his work on Will. “Out of curiosity, what reason did you give for your absence?”

Clarice sighed, audibly. “I said I was taking a weekend to decompress. Just to clear my head and relax.”

“Is that something you routinely do?”

“Yes. Every three or four months.”

“Good,” Dr. Lecter said, sounding very much the medical professional. “Those in high stress careers who do not take such time for themselves tend to burn out swiftly and spectacularly. One cannot do any job without first achieving their own well-being.”

Clarice laughed. “And clearly my well-being is your utmost concern.”

“Just so,” Dr. Lecter said, looking genuinely amused.

Clarice belatedly realized what had slipped out of her mouth, her eyes widening.

If anything, Dr. Lecter looked even more amused, the curve of his mouth visible even as he returned his focus to Will.

The fact that she had laughed was what had caught her own attention, causing her to re-examine the words themselves. It was with impaired awareness that Clarice realized she was impaired. She knew she shouldn’t have drunk even a single glass of wine with nothing in her stomach, but plans had a way of going awry around Dr. Lecter. At least she hadn’t finished the glass until the end of their conversation; it was only now affecting her. Clarice had been so careful with her words all evening; she had been frank, but had never said anything that could be interpreted as sarcastic or snide.

Until now, when she’d put her foot in it.

Yet he had taken it in good humor.

She slowly blinked as she processed the fact that she had just, in effect, teased Hannibal Lecter. For some reason, it seemed a liminal moment in her life, and she wasn’t quite sure how she had arrived here. She didn’t want to be here, literally or figuratively, but there was no changing that now.

Clarice watched, at what seemed like a great distance away, as Dr. Lecter replaced the gauze under Will’s bandages, totally focused on his task. For a moment, she could imagine that she wasn’t even here, that she was viewing the scene from afar in some impossible way. But she had only to move her cuffed hand slightly for a physical reminder of her presence here. She was present but separate, a participant in a conversation, and an observer of her own collision with the unclassifiable.

The summation of her day came in one succinct thought: she was alone in a cabin with two serial killers, and she was going to be just fine.

“This is surreal,” she commented.

“Surreal implies a disconnect from reality.” Dr. Lecter glanced at her, amusement still in his eyes. “Are you disconnecting from reality, Clarice?”

“I think reality is disconnecting from me. I don’t feel like I’ve been in reality since I set foot here.”

“We all create our own version of reality.”

“You do, maybe,” Clarice replied. “The rest of us just take it as it is.”

“Then you are not getting out of life all that you could be.”

“I get enough, I think.” Clarice slumped against the pillow she’d propped up earlier, deciding she was past the point of appearing on her guard when it was clear that she was noticeably tipsy. “We can’t all alter reality to our will.”

Dr. Lecter smiled. “Is that what I do?” He began taping Will’s bandages back in place. “I have never heard it described so. You have a particular understanding.”

Clarice exhaled. “You’re the second person to say that to me.”

“Who was the first?”

“Another profiler.” Even impaired, she wasn’t going to say Ardelia’s name.

“Did you profile me?” he asked with interest.

“I started to. But I didn’t get beyond a few scratches on paper. It seemed pointless. Everything that could possibly be said about you has been said. It’s even been said by you, in your refutation of Dr. Chilton’s book.”

Dr. Lecter nodded his head in acknowledgment. “Even so, we all have unique perspectives; yours would have reflected something inherent to your own experiences.”

Clarice stared past him. “My experiences with you are an anomaly.”

“Then they should contribute to a fascinating profile,” he said, one corner of his mouth turning up.

Clarice couldn’t think of a polite way to say that she had no desire to dissect those experiences publicly, that she didn’t want her name to become further associated with his in black and white. But she knew she needed to say something.

“The goal of a profile is understanding,” she said, her eyes drifting toward Will. “There’s only one person who understands you. I profiled him instead.”

When she glanced up, Dr. Lecter was watching her closely. “Will’s mind would be harder to understand than my own, I imagine.”

“I’m not talking about his mind, or how he does what he does. I’m talking about who he would choose to kill and why. I wanted a profile for practical purposes, not abstract ones.”

Dr. Lecter tilted his head. “And did you gain understanding?”

“I gained enough. My profile of Will is what led me here.”

“Did it indeed?” he asked. “I had wondered exactly how you came to be here, but it seems a more intriguing chain of events than I had imagined. We shall have to discuss it. Tomorrow, when Will can join us, and when we are all at our best.”

The last part was said with a peculiar humor, and Clarice knew he was referring to her. He seemed distinctly entertained that she was a little intoxicated.

She wondered if that had been his intention when he’d offered her wine but served her no food. Of course, his intention had also been to make the point that if she wasn’t eating his cooking, then she wasn’t eating at all, but he was more than capable of playing multiple games simultaneously. Though Clarice couldn’t claim that Dr. Lecter had pressured her to drink; she had done that all on her own.

The alcohol had certainly loosened her tongue. She was fortunate he liked her enough not to loosen it further.

Though given his general amusement, she began to suspect that Dr. Lecter was pleased to have gotten a few careless words out of her. If he had been hoping to see something other than her carefully strategic behavior, it was because he was curious, not because he was intending to hold whatever actions resulted against her. That wasn’t to say that Clarice believed she could do anything and not change his attitude toward her, just that a few inebriated comments weren’t going to be it, especially not if that’s what he had been aiming for.

It struck her that Dr. Lecter had ended their conversation at the table right after she had refused a refill of her glass. She imagined nothing would have delighted him more than to have had the conversation they had, and then to continue with it after she was truly intoxicated. But he didn’t show any dissatisfaction over the fact that things had proceeded differently.

She again realized that he was going to enjoy anything that happened. He would have enjoyed getting further inside her head while her defenses were down, but he enjoyed getting a peek just as much because it had led to entirely different conversation, as well as the expectation of an even more intriguing conversation tomorrow.

Clarice sighed. She was just tipsy enough not to have total control of what came out of her mouth, but still sober enough to analyze the motivations of a man most people couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“Maybe I do have a particular understanding,” she said dully.

Dr. Lecter smiled to himself.

He had finished with Will, and was now in the process of putting things back in his bag. Clarice watched as he rolled up the towel that held the discarded bloody gauze.

Her eyes drifted to Will, who looked as peaceful as ever. She couldn’t help but remember how horrible he’d looked when she’d found him.

“How badly is he hurt?” she asked.

“His wounds are superficial but agonizing,” Dr. Lecter said. “Designed to inflict pain without doing lasting damage in and of themselves, though they were getting progressively worse. The stab wounds avoided organs or arteries, although several of them are deep and would easily be prone to infection without the proper care. He was beaten, but besides a few cracked ribs there are no broken bones. None of these injuries would be incapacitating by themselves, but when taken together, they will produce a slow recovery.” He tilted his head, looking down at Will. “Fortunately, our killer was taking his time with things.”

Clarice generally couldn’t describe anything like what had happened to Will as fortunate, but she recognized what Dr. Lecter meant. It was fortunate that Benton had a taste for the sadistic, instead of simply killing Will outright. “He was going to torture him to death,” Clarice said. She paused, before asking, “How did he get him to begin with? What happened?”

“Perhaps we can include that in our conversation tomorrow.” Dr. Lecter stood. He picked up his bag and moved to the door. Setting it outside the room, he stepped back in and asked, “Would you like to use the restroom?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He unlocked the handcuffs and allowed her to step into the bathroom.

The first thing that Clarice noticed after she shut the door was the fact that the medicine cabinet over the sink was simply gone, four empty holes in the wall where it had been attached. The second thing she noticed was that the lid was off the toilet tank. The inside of the tank had been gutted, and the chain and hook was noticeably missing. She felt something in her stomach drop at that, even though she wasn’t sure that anything that had been there would have helped her pick the handcuffs. But she had missed her chance to obtain something potentially useful.

Then Clarice corrected herself. If Dr. Lecter had found pieces already missing from the tank, it’s not like she would have been able to keep them. And he would noticed that something was missing the first time he tried to flush the toilet himself.

But the fact that the room had been completely stripped told her that this was where she was going to be left. All things considered, she supposed it could have been worse. At least she would have access to both water and a toilet.

Clarice stared blankly at her surroundings, before she remembered that she really did need to use the restroom.

After she was done, she saw that the toilet could still be flushed, but only if she reached into the tank and lifted the flapper manually.

When she washed her hands, she noticed a clean hand towel draped across the back of the sink. There was no place in the bathroom to store extra towels, and Clarice wondered if Dr. Lecter had actually gone looking for any clean linen that might be in the cabin. He was meticulous, so it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.

She suddenly had the absurd mental image of him putting clean sheets on the bed before he’d put Will in it. However, the longer she thought about it, the more probable it seemed. Will had been bloody all over after he had secured her and had stumbled toward the bedroom himself, but she hadn’t noticed any blood on the quilt or the sheets when she had been left in the bedroom. Dr. Lecter must have changed the bed between patching Will up and giving him the sedative. On the surface it seemed an implausible thing to devote time to, but he was particular about arranging things to his liking.

Clarice shook her head to clear it and splashed water on her face. She might still be feeling the effects of the wine, but she was aware of it and was determined not to say anything else that wasn’t considered.

When she opened the door, Dr. Lecter led her back to the bedroom.

She sat down on the bed, resigned to the routine of being handcuffed by now.

However, he said, “I’m afraid I must insist on both hands overnight.”

Clarice’s brows shot up as she realized what he meant. “I’m sleeping here?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice.

Dr. Lecter looked at her plainly. “If you’re uncomfortable, you may sleep on the floor. I can adjust the cuffs.”

The strange thing was, he genuinely meant it. There was nothing derisive in his tone, no amusement at her expense. He was going to tie her up, but he wasn’t going to make her share a bed—even with a man who was practically comatose—if it made her uncomfortable.

“Thank you, but the bed is more comfortable than the floor.” She certainly wasn’t sleeping on the bare floor if she had the option of a mattress. “I’m just surprised. I assumed I’d be in the bathroom.”

“I would prefer that the restroom remain available.”

So she’d been right, then, about why he’d removed her from the bathroom to begin with. She supposed in a cabin of this size, there were only so many stationary things present to secure handcuffs to, and so here she was.

“Why aren’t you taking the bed?” Clarice asked. There had to be a reason besides his consideration of where to put her. She had assumed he would want to stay with Will.

“Regardless of where you are, it is more prudent for me to sleep in the front room,” Dr. Lecter said. “By the door.”

“Afraid I might make a successful escape attempt?”

Dr. Lecter smiled. “That is one consideration.”

It was somewhat gratifying to hear he hadn’t ruled out the possibility, even though she felt it extremely unlikely at this point. “And the other?”

“I am not expecting company, but if any arrives, I would like to be aware of it as soon as possible.”

If the arrival of law enforcement wasn’t a factor, there weren’t many other people she could imagine him wanting to be ready for. “You think Benton had an accomplice?”

Dr. Lecter shook his head. “Everything Will described to me points to Benton working alone. But one should always be prepared.” He paused. “If someone did know what was occurring here, I would certainly like to meet them.”

She bet he would.

But that answered the question of why he was sleeping in the other room; he was keeping himself between the door and the vulnerable Will.

Nothing about Will and Dr. Lecter’s relationship was ambiguous, but it threw Clarice off balance to see him arrange his own actions around Will without a second thought, without any apparent inconvenience or bother. She would have said it was impossible for him to show true concern for another person, even a person that he was involved with—but there was suddenly no doubt in her mind that Dr. Lecter cared more about Will than he did himself.

It was something he shouldn’t have seemed to be capable of, but he was made of contradictions.

Clarice sighed, before bringing her hands around the bar at the edge of the bed frame. Dr. Lecter snapped the handcuffs around each wrist, and then flipped off the light, leaving him silhouetted in the doorframe.

“I will see you in the morning,” he said.

Clarice didn’t think she could manage to say anything like ‘good night’ that would come out sounding good, so she simply nodded.

He left her then, but didn’t shut the door, and she heard him moving about the front room for a few moments before that light went out as well, and everything was still and silent.

Clarice shifted from sitting to lying down as best she could. She hugged the edge of the bed and curled up on her side, facing the opposite wall. It was about the only way she could lie and not feel completely constrained by the handcuffs. She had to keep her wrists where they were, and lying on her side was the most natural way to do that.

It hardly mattered that there was another person in the bed; she was incapable of moving beyond the edge of it anyway. And Will wasn’t going to be moving at all.

Clarice had always found the idea that two people couldn’t sleep in the same bed without it meaning something ridiculous, so she didn’t have any discomfort in that sense. She just couldn’t believe that her day had ended with her sleeping in the same room as a serial killer. She had known being here overnight was going to be unpleasant, but she hadn’t figured on it being bizarre.

Despite the fact that she chased psychopaths for a living, she had a relatively normal life. Only when it intersected with Hannibal Lecter did it become actively surreal.

Surreal was the only word to describe this entire experience.

Clarice took a deep breath, trying to put everything out of her mind and disconnect. With the wine she’d had, it wasn’t that hard. She had developed the skill of sleeping no matter what was happening around her at the orphanage, and had honed the ability to fall asleep quickly during her career, when sleep sometimes meant a nap on a plane or in an empty office.

She felt herself drifting off easily, and sleep was a welcome oblivion.