Miriam didn’t talk much after the trial. She moved as if she were in a dream, somewhere far away even while she shuffled at my side.
I could have killed Hannibal Lecter ten times over at those moments, chased by the memory of the looks exchanged between the Chesapeake Ripper and Miriam, between Dr. Lecter and Margo, and finally between the man and Will Graham.
Every time I remembered the misty, distant expression on Will’s face, my hatred would slip away like water dripping slowly from my hands.
All right, enough. I enjoyed slash fiction and yaoi as much as the next fangirl but this was ridiculous. I was an F.B.I. trainee, well, all right, my status was questionable just as Miriam’s was. My judgment was considered questionable since punching my superior, no matter how much I might question the questionable but this was all kinds of questionable, to completely distract my mind with a brain teaser. Why was I showing any sympathy for the man who’d kidnapped and mutilated someone I cared about? He was a monster. He’d proven he was a monster. I was supposed to hunt monsters like him. This was a monster who’d taken my Miriam, reduced her to a fragile wreck of the woman she’d been.
No. Miriam was stronger than that. I’d stake my life on it. She’d make a comeback from what happened to her. The journey back was going to be hard. I had to be patient. This trial was part of it.
It didn’t help me hang onto my hatred when Miriam herself didn’t appear to hate Hannibal Lecter. If anything, the sight of him seemed to take her away to some hidden place filled with hidden truths, secrets she could never share with me. A secret world of understanding she shared with him.
The sight of Hannibal Lecter gazing at Will might ease the ache of hatred in my chest but the sight Miriam intensified it. He’d taken her from me. He was still taking her from me even when we were supposed to be together.
If only I could have talked to Miriam about it, expressed some of confusion, shared our thoughts the way we used to before she disappeared. It seemed selfish to inflect my feelings upon her when she had her hands full dealing with her own and one of those hands she was still learning not to hate. All the rage she had released in a bullet on the wrong man seemed to focus itself upon her prosthetic, something she had shared with me in her more unguarded, calm moments.
I found myself dreaming of talking to Miriam, listening to her talk the way she did so seldom when she was awake. Not since she disappeared.
“I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you,” I confessed, sitting next to her on the bed. “I wanted you back so much, yet I feel like he still has you.”
“I’m still making my way back.” Miriam pressed my hand with her own, her flesh and blood fingers present in the dream. In dreams, artificial limbs can transform into what was lost or something far better. “Be patient with me, Clarice. He overwhelmed me in ways I’m still discovering. I have to get the better of the part of me that’s still with him, that’s still sleeping, waking in a quiet room, listening to music.”
“Here I thought Will Graham was the one who loved him.” I uttered the cruel, humorless jest, my greatest fear. “Dr. Hannibal Lecter acts almost like a vampire. Fall under his spell and you’re his. I almost wonder if I need to drive a stake into his heart to save you and Will Graham.”
Our bedroom disappeared. I found myself sitting in the witness seat in the courtroom where I saw the accused relax with such eerie calm. I felt anything but calm. Not with Miriam Lass smartly dressed in her suit as any lawyer, pacing the floor, and glowering at me with all the fury of a prosecuting attorney.
“Clarice Starling.” Miriam stabbed a finger at me, an artificial finger which is a weapon which reach out and penetrate my brain, poking the thoughts within. “How can you even think such a thing?”
“I don’t know. How can I?” Pain twisted in my throat, clawing its way out in words unsaid in the waking world. “I’m scared! That man feels unstoppable somehow. You make him seem unstoppable. The way you look at him, speak of him makes him feel unstoppable!”
Abruptly we shifted without explanation as you do in dreams. I was the one suited up, wearing gray slacks, a high-collared red shirt, and a smart gray blazer, glowering at Miriam who sat in the witness seat, avoiding my eyes.
“That man can seduce anyone, can’t he? He seduced Will Graham. He seduced you.” This time I’m the one pointing a finger. “How can I not be jealous? How can I not worry that in some twisted way you love him?”
Miriam didn’t answer. She lifted her hand which was the familar prosethetic she used in the waking world, which she was learning to live with. No hidden weapon within it that I could see. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know.” Abruptly I dropped my finger. Abruptly the courtroom disappeared. We sat together in a bar with low tables where our feet could touch the ground, looking at each other. Only the quiet sound of chamber music played in the background. “I do wonder. I wonder if you did once love him in some way I can never understand.”
“Of course I never loved him.” Miriam fixed her blue eyes upon me, filled with cold reason. “He overwhelmed me, but how could I love him? He never allowed me to. He let me think he was Frederick Chilton.”
I turned to Will Graham who was sitting quietly with us. I hadn’t heard him come into the bar or sit down. “Did you love him?”
“Yes.” He smiled with such sadness my heart constricted in my chest. “I refused to let him overwhelm me. I told myself over and over what he was, what he was capable of, what he’d done to Abigail. I would not be overwhelmed, but I couldn’t stop myself from loving him.”
“Two things I regret, Clarice.” I felt hands rest on my shoulders, letting their owner's presence seep through the cloth straight into me.
I tensed, half-expected his fingers to wrap around my throat, but there was no threat in Hannibal Lecter at that moment. If anything he offered me a gift, a secret. “One is taking Abigail Hobbs, our daughter away from Will. The other is taking Miriam Lass away from you.”
I woke up in a clammy sweat, his whisper still ringing in my ears, Miriam murmuring in her restless sleep at my side.
God help me, I believed him.