I don't own Hannibal or Clarice. If I did, I would totally write Clarice out and Hannibal would suddenly fall in love with a curly-haired brunette named Kat Valentine. You see my point. Anyway, on we go!
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He'd been patiently waiting, watching, anticipating her movements for days. Days turned to months and months turned to years, two to be exact. After that night he found that Clarice took painstaking efforts to be sure every window was locked, every door was latched and the alarm was constantly armed. He'd watched her grow weary and wrinkled with caution, that dangerous ember so commonly sparking had almost completely died.
He mused to himself as he watched from across the street, humming along to the Goldberg Variations emanating silently from his car radio. To hunt was a verb that meant to pursue and kill a wild animal, but also to try to find or locate someone carefully. He wondered which Clarice had become and, by definition, which he could pertain to her. Would it be like whispering softly to a wild beast? Or had Starling lost her nerve?
He chuckled, the sound almost nothing more than a breath of air between his teeth. He'd disappeared for a while, quietly slid away, and then realized there was a strangely large piece missing from his life. This piece was crimson-hued at the edges, and it spoke with a harsh crackle like Southern wildfire.
Without this piece, Dr. Lecter's life was terribly dull and horrifically ordinary. He'd thought about retreating to the shadows to assume an unheard of identity, perhaps a professor at a prestigious college, or something equally as blank. Something he could assume to bat around for interest, nothing more, and nothing less.
But he wasn't particularly intrigued by the concept of dissipating into anonymity; at least, not without the one thing he wanted to be anonymous with most.
He watched her nightly when the sky blanketed with stars, thick enough to shield him from view. His black car was obscured safely and she danced through her ritual. Thick, heavy sweatpants and a ratty old t-shirt, too large for her shapely figure. He watched her ghost through the living room, repeating her precious words in his mind.
Would you ever say 'stop. If you loved me, you'd stop'?
Not in a thousand years.
He'd supposed the spitfire had calmed by now, and the Southerner was no longer the ocean during a turbulent storm. No, now she was just a calm sea, blue as blue could be. Her eyes had lost the familiar luster. Now they were just scratched-out diamonds. No longer residual, no longer sparkling. Ferocity dead.
He'd calmly convinced himself he was not obsessed, it was ridiculous. Starling was an interesting human being. She'd stared solidly into his abyss, tempted his monster, and did so fearlessly with a jaw like stone. She wasn't frightened of him, like she rightly should have been, nor did she tremble when he threatened. His harpy didn't awaken any stir in her besides resilience, and a solid objection so fierce he felt as though he'd met his rival. She was, in some ways, his equal.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Clarice. How mediocre you truly have become."
And he shifted the gear silently into drive, the smallest plans turning in his head.