Her skin feels cold, it also looks pale. The kind of paleness reserved only for the dead.
He carries her body all the way up the stairs, enters her bedroom without hesitation.
There's a strange feeling of loss as he sets her down on the bed, hands missing the feel of her ivory skin.
He kneels before even thinking of doing so. He takes her hand on his kissing the back of it softly. And kneeling before the bed, before her, one could say Hannibal Lecter was praying.
A moment, a long moment as he watches her face. There's no sound on his mind, he is not on his Memory Palace, he is with her and not there at all.
There's no anger, no guilt, only a lingering feeling of sadness that wants to creep into the emptiness filling his chest.
He always thought he would die first. But then he was never able to entirely predict her.
He kisses her palm for a while longer, eyes never leaving her closed ones.
Silently he stood.
As the police came Clarice's body waited on the bedroom, her chest open and filled with pink blossoms.
On the autopsy they never found her heart, her body was placed with respect and profound care. Jack Crawford didn't cry until he was alone and as he watched the flowers he saw a tribute, a final courtesy by the good doctor. Crawford didn't have it on him to be angry at the flower setting.
She never looked so beautiful.
As Ardelia mourned, researches were done and she stumbled onto the meaning of blossoms: eternal love.
On Florence, Lecter stood over his desk, drawing, black lines composing the image of an angel holding a lamb, a lamb completely silent. And on the background a deer watched with red eyes, hidden, waiting, he had dreams to haunt tonight, as he had been haunting these last days.
Not that anyone would know, as the deer haunted and Hannibal went silent, silent like a lamb.