Chapter Text
The moth don't care if the flame is real
'Cause flame and moth got a sweetheart deal
And nothing fuels a good flirtation
Like need and anger and desperation
-Aimee Mann
On graduation day, the FBI gave Clarice Starling a badge and a publicist.
Every morning and evening news show wanted her as a guest. Oprah invited her to Chicago and Dateline offered to send a crew to Arlington. People Magazine had a place for her on the cover if she agreed to an exclusive. She was encouraged to refuse every proposition; the agency had released a tidy statement congratulating a trainee on defeating Buffalo Bill and saving Catherine Martin, and the powers that be declared it would have to suffice. There was no need to tell Barbara Walters who she’d like to see play her if Hollywood made a movie.
“I can’t control what The National Tattler puts on the cover,” Clarice countered after two weeks of headlines purporting her secret rendezvous with the fugitive Hannibal Lecter. “I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself, believe me. But I’d rather have my own words on record than let that rag make shit up.”
That was how Clarice found herself wearing a two-piece Chanel skirt suit, posing on the stairs in front of the Academy for a photographer from Time.
Her name was only a blurb on the cover, but her picture and the accompanying text took up the entirety of pages twenty-one and twenty-two.
Hannibal Lecter purchased the issue dated July 10, 1991 from an Argentinian street vendor, and he held it carefully until he found an acceptable table at a sidewalk cafe. He used a napkin to wipe the surface before he placed the magazine down and gingerly opened it.
First, he scanned the contents for her name. He skipped the letters to the editor, the Critics Voice’s weighing in on Twin Peaks, and an essay on the impact of Desert Storm on starving children in Iraq to study the glossy image of her that preceded the opening paragraph.
He hummed his approval of the wardrobe. The pleated skirt was alternating panels of navy and black wool, and the length was appropriately modest while still drawing attention to her toned legs. The corresponding black, buttoned suit coat had two pockets at the hips with navy, velvet detailing along the edges to match the soft collar. Chanel, he guessed, and checked the cutline to confirm. The peep-toe pumps were simple but appeared to be shiny and new. The entire ensemble was on loan from the magazine, but he liked to think Clarice managed to add it to her personal wardrobe afterward.
The second page had a smaller inset photograph, but it was a close-up of her face. He used the pad of his pinky finger to touch the scar on her cheek. Her hair was longer by not more than an inch. She wore the same coral lipstick he remembered from her second visit to the asylum; it had pleased Lecter to know she’d made the time to apply a fresh layer despite rushing there in the heavy rain, and the waxy smell of it had been strong enough that he’d been able to taste it on his tongue.
Her smile was subdued, not reaching her eyes, but he saw pride in the curve of her lips.
From the text, he gleaned that not even single-handedly slaying Buffalo Bill and saving a senator’s daughter had earned Clarice Starling a seat in Jack Crawford’s BSU. No, she was preparing for a move to Arizona; her first assignment as a Special Agent was to the Tucson field office.
Lecter looked away from the pages, idly wondering if he could sacrifice the cool, crisp climate of Buenos Aires for the stifling heat of summer in the Southwestern region of the United States. During the peak of monsoon season, too.
Ultimately, it was too much of a risk to travel stateside so soon. He had to consider Crawford and the other suits only agreed to the profile of Clarice in a national news magazine to lure him into their clutches.
For one year, Dr. Lecter kept Clarice’s issue of Time safe and snug between the front and back of a leather-bound folio. He procured every issue of the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Sentinel on a monthly basis, though her name continued to appear more often in The National Tattler than the two reputable newspapers combined.
The delay was for the best, really.
Much to Dr. Lecter’s delight, Tucson found itself in the clutches of a serial murderer in the months before he finally purchased a one-way ticket in the name of Dr. John Fell.