The first time Dr. Lecter had heard the tale of Jonah and the whale he was but a boy in a place he does not willingly remember often.

Yet as he roams through the maze that was Clarice Starling’s new home (new to him, anyways) he cannot help feeling as though it was he that was enveloped in the belly of a whale. He notes with some appreciation the color scheme of the rooms, the various medals that his ambitious, competitive host has accumulated in her youth from sport competitions as well as the few but noteworthy books that she keeps neatly stacked on a shelf.

In the end, when he does decide to wrap it up and finally go and find her, he is the one who is startled by the sight before him.

There, in the kitchen eating strawberries without a care in the world, was a very pregnant Clarice Starling.

“I did wonder when you’d show up, considering your latest letter.”

“Clarice.”

***

The first letter he sent her was just a note. Two sentences, really. It took her a little while to figure out it was crypted using the Vigenere cipher - archaic, but considering her correspondence was hardly a matter of national importance it was there more to play with her than to actually hide the message from other potential onlookers - and after that it took her a not so little while to decrypt it.

Late at night, bent over the little innocent-looking piece of paper as she was in the process of deciphering its contents, she often wondered at how the sophisticated mind of Dr. Lecter would sooner resort to primitive anagrams and ciphers than the more advanced tools of this new age.

In the end the note was as follows:

It is possible to put a dangerous knife in a drawer amongst forks and spoons and make it look perfectly ordinary. I wonder if that is why you hide in the moroccan countryside with a husband and a baby on the way.

The key was not immediately apparent but it was feasible to figure it out, and she was in the process of doing so when Dr. Lecter graciously offered her a shortcut two days later by sending her one single blood red peony.

She never replied to his letters - it was not wise, since he never really signed his name and she had no way of proving to herself it was him -, and he must not have taken it to heart for he himself kept sending her letters and in each new one the key would be the name of a flower.

***

Not all his letters used the Vigenere, and some were utter nonsense except for a very few words in medias res that could be decrypted by using the flower key, but she quickly learnt that it was intentional. And in a very few of the gibberish letters, the words that she could decrypt were not in english.

One, in particular, drew her attention. She had returned after a long, inconclusive day of investigating the most irritatingly enigmatic case only to find the note on her desk, along with a single red rose.

Ah, my Valentine strikes again.

Gibberish, yada yada yada - Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus - more gibberish.

Latin, huh, as well as shameless theft from Umberto Eco’s Il Nome Della Rosa.

But the timing of the missive did make her think.

It might be related to her case… That is when she started to write back.

***

It is not a monastery, in the end, but something quite close.

She had spent quite some time the previous year - her honeymoon, she thinks with some bitterness - in Italy and she had seen her fair share of churches there. But aside from stained glass, beautiful statues and affreschi there was an ominous air in all of those places… maybe it was the fear of God, maybe it was her Protestant childhood that left her with no patience for catholic artistic theatrics, or maybe she had spent too much time in Morocco where the mosques had quite a different feel.

Nevertheless, she went into the belly of the whale despite the doctor’s warning that day in her kitchen.

***

“I did wonder when you’d show up, considering your latest letter.”

“Clarice.”

“I do recall a promise - an unsolicited one, Doc - to not ‘call on me’… ” Her sharp, endearingly crooked little baby teeth bit into the next strawberry with all the enthusiasm of a tiger pouncing on some hapless little animal.

“Yeees - he slurred, with some faint amusement on his pale face - yes, there was a promise, but I believe there are also some very extenuating circumstances here, no?”

He didn’t wait for a response, “But before we get to business, you look tired, if you’ll forgive me saying so.”

“I don’t look tired, I am tired. For obvious reasons… I fear it is not so much me going through pregnancy as it is the pregnancy going through me. But only at times like these, in the mornings.”

Clarice’s kitchen was just as neat and tidy as he had imagined, he was noticing. Spotless, in fact, and smelled like the telltale lemon and lysol too.

“Umm… somehow, I don’t think the usual, if unfortunate, pregnancy symptoms are the only reason for your eyebags.”

That is when she started trying to get up, with some difficulty, “Honestly, doctor, a man gets to an age where trying to lick tears carries the same pettiness as-“ Someone opened the front door of the house, two rooms away from the kitchen. “Oh fuck no… Madge, love, is that you? Can you go to the neighbours and ask them for the plates I left at their house? Thanks, honey.”

“Doctor, ‘due respect, but say what you came here to say and go.”

“Surely you do not think I approve of you, or any pregnant woman, going on this fool’s errand at all, let alone by yourself.”

Author note: it’s an open ending bc I’m a lazy person who only started drafting the febuwhump drafts in the last days of January so. Uhm. Anyways, I’ll probably post this on ao3 too as Delia_Kitt.