SUBLIME, Hannibal Lecter

x. another version of me

She had seriously considered requesting a transfer.

But she couldn't. Because of Beverly.

It was because of her that she hadn't hung up when Jack Crawford had called her in the middle of the night. And it was thanks to what she'd learned from him that Miriam Lass had been found and Sloane had had to run out into the night without a word of explanation to her fiancé, since Jack had been careful to stress that the information was strictly confidential, as if Sloane had suddenly gone back to being a trainee.

That was how she'd spent her night, with Zeller and Price, first at the crime scene and then in the lab, collecting every bit of evidence from the survivor's body.

And though Jack was beginning to doubt everyone around him, there was no one else he could trust for a job like this. Sloane had been involved from the start. She had been the one to tell Miriam Lass that Jack Crawford was looking for her back then. She had been the one to suggest that Miriam might still be alive.

And that was why the two of them now sat together in the witness protection house assigned to Miriam, seated across from her. The recently rescued woman's gaze was almost vacant, as if she couldn't focus, her body swallowed by a sweatshirt. Sloane's eyes briefly fell on the missing arm, the one they'd found months ago in the observatory, but her expression didn't change. Her face remained cold as ice.

"Thank you," Miriam Lass broke the heavy silence. "I knew you'd never stop looking," she said, turning to Jack. She cast a quick glance at Sloane. "I remember you, Agent Winters. You were brilliant. A bit of a legend among us. I think I owe it to you too that I'm here."

Sloane only gave a short nod, while Jack stayed silent. He knew too well that he had lost hope of ever finding her alive. From the very moment she disappeared, he had assumed she was dead.

Miriam spoke again. "Can I see him?" she asked, with a flicker of hope. Sloane realized that the woman thought the FBI had already caught the Chesapeake Ripper.

Sloane shook her head. "The Chesapeake Ripper hasn't been found."

Miriam's eyes widened, darting between the two agents. "He's... he's still... free?"

Jack nodded and spoke. "We need your help, Miriam. You know who he is."

"I don't..." she said quickly, shaking her head. "...know who he is."

But Jack knew better. "You found him," he said quietly.

"I don't remember finding him," Lass insisted. "He got inside my head. I remember a dream about drowning. And then being awake. And not awake. being myself, and not myself. I'd wake up to the smell of fresh flowers... and the sting of a needle." Her eyes drifted toward a point in the room that wasn't there, lost in her memories of captivity. "I wasn't afraid. Fear and pain were so... far away."

"I was reckless with your life," Jack said suddenly, his voice low.

"No," she denied softly. "I was reckless with my life."

"I saw what I needed in you and I used you. I let you break the rules on my behalf, while I hid behind deniability and protected someone else," he admitted, making Sloane's brows tighten, if only slightly. What Jack hadn't, and never would, admit to anyone was that back then he had used Miriam Lass to investigate the Ripper in ways that were forbidden to him. But, more importantly, ways that were forbidden to Sloane Winters. Jack would have trusted Sloane with his life, but letting her investigate that deeply could have risked the career she had worked so hard for. So instead, he sent her replacement.

"Agent Crawford, please do not apologize to me for my mistakes," Miriam insisted. "He treated me very well, until the end, until he put me in the ground. Even when... he took my arm. He told me what he was going to do. I went to sleep, woke up, it was gone. He said he wanted to give it to you."