Cometh the Hour

Happily Ever After

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.