Actions

Work Header

Stromata

Summary:

After the murder of Ardelia Mapp by a serial killer, Clarice confronts her past and the demons of her present under the manipulative hands of Dr Hannibal Lecter.

Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 


What, what does it take to make it through another day
If a feather lined with his words becomes a blade?
- Tori Amos -


Baltimore, Maryland
January 2009

“Holy Mary, Mother of Money.” Clarice leaned against the door of her old Honda and stared at the mansion in front of her. “What the hell did Alana get me into?”

This wasn’t a home, not the kind she was used to. Her entire apartment could fit into the courtyard out front with room to spare. Even after her quick tour of Italy and the invitations to department dinners that had sent her places far above her station, she’d never thought people really lived like this. She looked at her shoes, the spots of paint standing out like tinsel on black velvet. She should have remembered to wipe them down after she left the studio, but she never did. Ardelia had always been the one to fuss at her for her mess, usually wiping paint from her hair and face at the end of the day before kissing her.

But that was before.

Everything in her life was prefaced with the word, and she swallowed it down as she walked the path to Dr Lecter’s office.

Now she was just a messy, messed up student at the doorstep of yet another psychiatrist. At least this one was well labelled, and she didn’t get lost like she did when she met with Alana. She held her hand up to knock when the door opened, and she jumped back, startled.

The woman before her was not much older than she was, and had a friendly, smiling face. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you, but I saw you pull up. Are you Miss Starling?”

Clarice nodded.

“I’m Ellen, Dr Lecter’s assistant. I wanted to let you in before I left for the day. Please, come in.”

“Thank you,” Clarice said. She walked into the waiting room and took a seat.

“Have you lived in Baltimore for very long?”

“No, we just moved here over the summer.”

“Who did you move here with?”

Clarice swallowed and looked away. “My… my friend. We went to school together in Virginia, both got accepted to grad school here.”

“How lovely,” Ellen said. “I hate to run, but I have a date tonight. He’s English and he’s just…” Ellen smiled and sighed. “I think he might be the one, you know?”

Clarice nodded and bit her lip. She did know; she remembered feeling that way the day she looked at Ardelia like she was really seeing her for the first time. Her heart had been warm and beating like it was too big for her chest to contain. It kept beating like that for three years, until --

“When you’re done, Dr Lecter will leave me a note to tell me when to schedule your next appointment. I’ll call you tomorrow if that’s okay?”

“That sounds great.”

“KL5-7772?”

“That’s my mobile; if I don’t answer I might be in a seminar. Just leave me a message with the date and the time. I’ll be here.”

“Perfect,” Ellen said. She grabbed her purse and walked to the door, taking her keys from her bag. “He’ll be with you soon. There’s fridge behind my desk with water and juice if you want something while you wait.”

“Thank you, Ellen,” Clarice said, waving to her as she walked out the door. The lock turned solidly, and she settled back against the chair.

She didn’t mean to doze, for indeed she was normally more careful when she wasn’t at home, where it was safe. But there was comfort here, in this space with cool, clean walls and soothing pictures of budding flowers. It put her at ease, and for a moment she let her mind relax.


“Don’t go, Clarice. Stay with me, always! YOU PROMISED!”  

There was a warm hand on her shoulder, and when Clarice opened her eyes she felt the tears on her cheeks. A moan was in her throat, bubbling up, and she brought both hands to her mouth as she tried not to scream.

“Miss Starling?”

Clarice focused on the voice, the past dissolving as she returned to the present. In front of her was a man, his brow furrowed in concern. His eyes were unlike anything she had ever seen, darkest red and vibrantly alive.

“I was dreaming,” she said.

“I could hear you in the next room,” he said, his voice betraying the slightest hint of irritation.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your…”

“I’ll be with you shortly if you can contain yourself.”

Clarice could feel blood rise in her cheeks, and she felt like he’d slapped her with his words. Her head even rocked back, and she held a hand to her cheek. Any other time, she would have rallied, letting her anger take flight as she lit into him like the country girl she was at heart. But she was tired, and instead she nodded, watching him as he walked back into his office.

He returned twenty minutes later. The chilly demeanour was no different, and she shivered as she walked past him.

Just make it through this, and save what’s left of your life.

The office wasn’t like Alana’s had been: small and cosy, inviting in its simplicity. This space was huge, ornate, and terrifying to the eyes. There was too much for Clarice to take in, too many paintings, too many books. It made her head spin, and as he directed her to her seat she decided to focus on one thing – a horrid geometric black and white print behind him. She almost wrinkled her nose in disgust, catching herself before she made the expression, but only just. Dr Lecter cleared his throat, and she looked up, realizing he had sensed her thoughts by the sardonic twist of his mouth.

Be good, Clarice.

“Thank you again, Dr Lecter, for seeing me like this. After Alana – Dr Bloom – decided she wasn’t the best fit for me, I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

He shuffled the papers next to him, taking a small pad of paper and a fountain pen she’d bet her scholarship would pay for her apartment for the next few months. The opulence disgusted her, but she bit it back even as he sighed with disdain. “Dr Bloom – Alana – is an old friend, and I’m more than happy to perform a favour on her behalf, no matter how inconvenient.”

Didn’t Alana say he was kind, compassionate? This is all wrong.

She shifted in her chair. “I… I don’t know how much she told you about me.”

“Just the basics, but I’d like to hear it in your own words.”

“Okay... My, ummm,” she sighed, letting the words come to her as they had every time she had recounted the story to the police.  “My best friend was murdered almost two months ago. A truck driver found her body in the Ohio River. She’d… her skin had been…” Clarice heard her voice crack, and she stopped for a minute, willing the tears not to come. She’d seen the pictures; they’d been leaked on some god-awful true crime website. “We… the last time I saw her, we… we’d had a fight and didn’t leave things well. She was so angry at me and left, and… I’m sorry, may I have a tissue?”

“Of course.” He passed her the box next to him.

“Thank you.” Her nose was dripping, and she felt like a child when she blew her nose. “It’s hard to think about that night without… She was so angry with me, screaming at me that I was breaking her heart, and--”

“Are you a lesbian?”

“I—what?”

“I asked you a question, Miss Starling. Were you and your friend romantically involved?”

“I… we…”

“Miss Starling, I don’t have time for this. Considering that you are not paying for your treatment with me, I’d expect you to be more concise and answer my questions honestly.”

“Is this Alana’s idea of a joke? What--”

“It’s only a joke if you make it one. Do you want to waste my time and yours?”

“Dr Lecter, I don’t… I don’t think – “

He tossed his notes to the side. “Do you know what you look like, sitting across from me with your cheap bag and cheaper shoes? You look like… what do they call it? Poor white trash? Alana told me about you: your scholarship to a good art school, your background in and out of foster homes. Do you think you fit in here? You’ve cleaned up well to come to my office, but you’re not a generation out of the coal mine are you? How did you even get into such a school? Was it drawing in the dirt with a stick? Perhaps with your fingers, on the walls of a dusty shack?” He spoke as nonchalantly as one would when ticking off their grocery list, and flicked an invisible speck of lint from the lapel of his suit after he was done.

He was one of the people her daddy had warned her about, when he got cross about the folks who lived in town. Her father had worked in the coal mines, and Clarice was not ashamed of growing up poor, then growing up with nothing but a plastic sack of paints and brushes as she was moved from foster family to foster family, after her uncle had given up on her. She was far from West Virginia, and had even gotten to travel some when she was an undergrad. But no one had ever tried to make her feel like this, like she was so much less than the rest of the world.

Clarice finally did something that Ardelia had always prevented with her kind words and calming voice. She got angry. And when Clarice got angry, she was her daddy all over again.

“It was in the mud with an old shotgun, you asshole! You know what? You can kiss my lily-white ass! I don’t give a flying fuck if the university makes me take a break – I’m fucking done with highfalutin self-righteously rude bastards like you!” She took a breath, trying to calm herself, but when she looked at his smug, self-righteous face, the anger overwhelmed her again. Grabbing her purse, she walked to the door and opened it, giving him the finger as she spun around. “You know what else? Your high-class taste? It sucks. Just looking at all the shit in your office would make me puke every time I walked in the door. Goodbye, your fucking highness, and good--”

She slammed the door behind her before she made a bigger ass of herself, and sat in the same chair she’d waited in.

“Riddance. Oh my god, now you’ve done it, Clarice,” she said, putting her hands to her face as the tears came again. No more school, no more Baltimore. She might be able to get a job back home, teaching French at the same high school she’d attended. The thought instantly depressed her, and she wished that she could wallow in the misery. Distantly, she could hear a piano playing close by, and she remembered where she was. She stood and ran to the door, trying to open it without success. It was locked, and there was no latch on the inside – only a key would open it.

“Son of a BITCH,” she said, pounding on it for a moment before sinking to her knees in despair.

She wouldn’t go back in there. Perhaps she could just lie here for a while, and in the morning Ellen would open the door and let her out. She hoped it would happen, for a moment considered praying for the first time in years for it to be so. When the door to his office opened, she hid her face, not looking at him as he calmly walked to the door. Dr Lecter opened it, just wide enough for her to crawl through before shutting it behind her.

Clarice ran to her car, and in the safety of her vehicle cried until there were no more tears to shed.


“Hannibal did what?”

Clarice told the story of that awful night again, watching Alana’s eyes widen with each word. When she was done, she took a long pull of her beer and leaned back against the leather booth. She was exhausted, and retelling the event did not help.

“That’s so unlike him, Clarice. I’m honestly shocked. He’s one of the best psychiatrists I know – he trained me for fuck’s sake…” She pulled out her phone.

Clarice sat up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to call him and give him a piece of my mind,” Alana said.

Clarice snatched the phone and put it in her own bag. “No, you aren’t. I never want to see or speak to him again. This won’t help. I just want to forget this ever happened.”

“Is there something I can do? I can refer you to someone else; it would only take a few calls.”

“I’m done, Alana,” Clarice said. “I just want to go home.”

“I’ll get the tab – “

No,” she said. “I mean home, home. If I can’t show that I can keep up with my work, they are going to make me take time off. There’s no way I can stay here, without being in school and without my stipend. I’ll have to leave. Maybe it’s for the best. I see Ardelia everywhere, and it’s probably better if I start over. I just wish I was someone else, anyone else than who I am right now.” She started crying again in earnest, and she let Alana hold her until the worst passed.

“I am so sorry, about all this,” Alana said. She gave her a napkin from the table and watched as Clarice dried her eyes.

“It’s not your fault. Whoever killed Ardelia is to blame. He didn’t kill me, but sometimes I feel as much of a victim as she was. It’s so stupid to feel that way – I’m alive, but I feel like a ghost.”

“You need to talk to someone.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“It’s different – it’s why I can’t treat you like a patient, because I don’t think I can treat you like a patient. I want to be your friend and walk with you through this, not be a guide for you to help you work through your emotions, and that’s what you need. I want to kill that bastard as much as you do.”

“Maybe not quite as much,” Clarice said. She stared at the light above them, and when her phone rang she ignored it.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

“What’s the point?” she said, but she picked it up and looked at the number all the same. “Are you kidding me? It’s Dr Lecter’s office.”

“Answer it, Clarice.”

“I hope I can tell him to go to hell, and this time you can watch.” Alana laughed as Clarice answered the phone.

“Miss Starling?” Ellen asked.

“Yes?”

“Dr Lecter would like to schedule a follow-up appointment; he was wondering if you could come by on Sunday at 7:30.”

What?” Clarice asked. “He wants to see me again?”

“Yes, at least once a week… he doesn’t normally see patients on Sundays, but it’s not unheard of.”

“Can you hold, just for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Clarice put the phone down. “Did you hear that?”

“Just what you said. Does he really want to see you?”

“Every Sunday at 7:30.”

Alana raised her brows. “The pair of you sound like a combination of oil and vinegar. There’s no way he can develop a therapeutic relationship with you, not after the way he behaved.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Well… go, at least once. I hope he wants to apologize, at the very least, but it’s probably best leave it at that.”

Clarice nodded and picked up the phone. “Ellen, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there this Sunday.”

“Good, I’ll let him know. I’m not in the office on Sundays, so he’ll meet you at the front door of the house. Is that okay?”

“Yes. Thank you, Ellen.” She hung up the phone and looked at Alana.

“You do realize that you’ll have to call me afterwards, right?”

“Yeah,” she sighed.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll go. I mean, despite the way I acted I was brought up better than that. I’ll figure out the rest on Monday, I guess.” She tore at the label on her bottle.

“Just don’t do anything you’ll regret later. You may be able to work your way through this, better than you know. You’re a strong woman, Clarice.”

Clarice shrugged. As much as she appreciated the sentiment, it was something she had heard from her advisor, professors, and the few friends she had on campus. And she didn't believe it. Perhaps once, it was true. But that had been before...

Her chin trembled, and she looked away from Alana's sincere smile. She didn’t see the dark, still figure across the bar settle her tab, fading back into the shadows as he continued watching her from afar.

Notes:

I’m working my way backwards to the beginning of a story, and that’s a little weird to me. This does not (and probably should not) need to be read before ‘The Screaming of the Lambs’. This story didn’t even have to exist and just enhances the information from the first, but the muse grabbed me and refused to let me shake the story off without writing it down. Hopefully will update every few days at least, but it all depends on how fast I can edit without things looking atrocious.