This is a very odd fic... I was just listening to a song one day when I thought of the ending to this, so a year later (Me? A procrastonater? No, of course not! ;)) I finally sat down and began to write it... It was supposed to be a sequel to Hannibal, but somehow it became a some-what depressing story taking place after Silence. It's depressing now, but it does get happier (I promise it won't take me a year to update! :P)... I don't really know how many people will like this, it's VERY odd, as I said... but read it anyway, and even if you don't like it, comment and tell me that ;) Thanks!

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters mentioned here and I do not have permission to be writing this story, but it's for entertainment purposes only and I am making no money! So bite me! Er, wrong genre to say that in... :P


Star-crossed

Through her whole life, she had never wanted anything but to be happy.



Clarice Starling, age twenty-eight, had already seen too much for someone her age. She still had not coped with the death of her parents, who died when she was eleven. One would think that defeating someone as wanted as Jame Gumb, aka "Buffalo Bill" would have served as the basis to end all of her misery. For all she truly ever wanted, besides to be happy, was success.

However, life doesn't always run as we would like it to. Clarice came out of the FBI Academy with two friends, Jack Crawford and Ardelia Mapp. Clarice and Ardelia were partners for one year, before Ardelia was shot and killed in a drug-bust. Clarice could never fully heal from that, either. Jack's wife, Bella, died later that same week; when Jack found her, he took his own life, for he found that there was no point to living without her. In one week, Clarice's world was turned upside down, screwed to the point of no-reversal, and it seemed for a while there that perhaps, the only true way out would be through death.

One month after...

She looked into the mirror. Her long red hair looked like shit, it was in tangles and knots, there was even some crusting blood near the tips, where she had accidently let her hair slip into the cuts on her legs from the razors. It took away all the pain, all the stress to just run the razors across her legs. She felt dead all over, it let her know she was still alive.

Her green eyes were almost closed, they were nothing more than slits in her face which had no life in them whatsoever. Her lips and cheeks were chapped, the result of the multiple salty tears which had fallen down her face. There were bruises on her neck and chest from the drug-bust, which reminded her of Ardelia every time she looked at them. There was no use in even trying, she could never shake what she was feeling now.

There was blood and vomit on her white t-shirt. Some blood from the cuts on her legs was seeping through her pants, too. She looked down and figured that she should change but then thought "What's the use?" as she collapsed on the couch and looked outside to the moon again; it was all she had now.

There was a knock on the door. She looked to the clock, which stated that it was three AM. It took her a few minutes to get to it, the depression slowed her down to an unbelievable rate. However, when she finally answered the door, she began to wish that she had never gotten off the couch in the first place.

"Doctor..." she whispered as she let him in.