Clarice is silent.

Hannibal Lecter remained slowly sipping the wine, enjoying the complex flavor fill his mouth and linger on his tongue. The room was dark enough that he did not need to close his eyes to spend time wandering through his mind palace. But as he always did when he was conflicted, he needed to consult the past to find his way forward.

He went past Mischa for the time being. He often visited her in times of crisis, but that was not what he needed now. He was not in crisis, after all. And Mischa was not the right focus for his attention when he could still smell sex in the air around him from his and Clarice's combined release only a few short hours ago.

There were a number of rooms in his mind palace devoted to Clarice. Memories of her had been a pleasant diversion quite often in the last seven years since they had first met. Nearly eight years ago, now. Time had a different meaning when he had been locked away in that Baltimore basement. If he had been able to spend time outside, he would have been pleased for the winter frost to melt into the brisk early spring that had brought her to him that very first day. He only knew it was day because of the behaviors of the other patients. And it was that early spring in Tennessee when he had made his brilliant escape. Hannibal did not spend much time congratulating himself on his actions, but that had been one of his more ingenious endeavors.

For years afterward, Hannibal traveled the world and changed his face and his hand and name enough that no one found him for many, many years. And during that time, he had visited Clarice in his mind almost as often as he visited Mischa. She was a comfort to him in so many ways, but more than that, she was a fascinating project. He spent time contemplating. So much time, in fact, that he had been more than ready for the rigorous work they had done together since arriving here in Maryland together. He had already determined what methods to use with her, what triggers would elicit the most results, and what areas required the focus of all these efforts.

All of that was done now. Clarice had been put through her paces and now ran circles around him, whether she knew it or not. And besides that, Hannibal did not need to visit her in his mind palace because she was just down the hall in reality.

No, what Hannibal needed now was clarity. He found the room he searched for. He walked through the door and came out onto the twilight of Florence. It was not so long ago that he was there, so the memory was recently refreshed. There were no tourists around. The locals were all in the midst of the late Italian supper in their homes. His view was the one right upon leaving the Duomo. He walked to what he sought. The Baptistery of San Giovanni. The moonlight and small lamps meant for visitors illuminated the bronze east doors. And Hannibal stood there gazing upon the Old Testament scenes by Ghiberti on the Gates of Paradise.

Bronze sculpture was never a particular favorite of Hannibal's, and sculpture in relief was especially lacking the usual vibrancy he sought in artistic endeavors. But for now, tonight, he needed a simpler subject to help him organize his thoughts. And as he stared at the memory of the doors, he found a new appreciation of the brilliance. The three-dimensional world created on each panel was so rich and utterly revolutionary for what Ghiberti had done at the time. Looking at it in this manner, away from the world, unbothered by distraction, Hannibal understood why Michelangelo himself had been the one to give these doors their well-known moniker.

A small sound distracted him, pulling him out of his thoughts and observations. His vision returned to the room he currently inhabited. There sound was soft. Light pressure on the runner rug in the hallway, revealed only by the slight shuffle of the rug against the floor beneath. The near inaudible creak of the wooden floor. The sound got closer.

There was a change in the shadow of the hallway. He waited quietly, wanting to observe.

Clarice walked down the hall. She did not sneak. She did not have any surreptitious intent in her movements. She was not trying to hide. Hannibal's lips twitched at that. She was not afraid. Good.

"It is very late, Clarice," he stated. His voice was not hushed, nor was it jarring in the silence.

She stopped where she was and turned toward the sound of her voice. "Why are you sitting in the dark?" she asked.

"I was thinking. I did not see purpose to the light at this moment," he answered.

"Did you already clean the kitchen?" she asked, taking a few small steps toward him in the dark.

He smiled softly, finding a strange pleasantness in the knowledge that she paid attention to his statement upon bidding her goodnight and that she was polite enough to inquire about it. "I did, yes," he replied.

At this point, Hannibal decided that the darkness had served its purpose. He reached up to the floor lamp that hung over the back of the armchair in which he sat. The light flooded the room quite abruptly.

Clarice stood there in the simple beige cashmere dressing gown he had provided for her. Her eyes squinted in the sudden brightness. Her hair was quite mussed, about as messy as it had been after his earlier attentions. She either had not bothered to brush it before going to bed or she had been tossing and turning. "I expected you to be asleep, Clarice," he said.

She frowned. "I couldn't sleep."

"Has my presence interrupted a late-night stroll?"

"No. I didn't really know what I was doing, but lying in bed wasn't helping at all," she told him.

"The kitchen is fully stocked if you would like something to eat or drink to help you sleep."

Clarice raised her brow. Her eyes were no longer squinting now that she was used to the light. "I didn't know the kitchen is where you keep the sleep aids, doctor."

Hannibal's mouth twitched with mirth. Her system was not entirely free of the drugs he'd been giving her without stop since Muskrat Farm. It would take longer for everything to dissipate. But he knew she was clearer headed now than she had been in quite some time. He explained, "There is no need for any of that now, Clarice."

She looked as though she wanted to question him further on that point, but she decided against it. "May I join you here?" she asked instead.

"Of course," he said, pointing her to the same chair she'd taken earlier. "Your wine is still there if you would like it. I found my own glass and decided to drink it here for a while after I finished in the kitchen."

Clarice took her chair and picked up her glass. "What did you do with Krendler?" she asked, not yet taking a sip of the wine.

"I used the bone saw to slice his body into smaller pieces. I put the pieces in two plastic garbage bags to carry out to the boat on the lake, and I dropped the pieces around various parts of the lake before dropping the bags into the lake with rocks to weigh them down," he answered calmly.

She regarded him curiously. "Why did you tell me that?"

Again, Hannibal almost smiled. He recalled the past when she would ask him questions about Buffalo Bill and the other related dealings in their time in Baltimore and Tennessee. But never before had she asked him of his own motives. She had been new and naïve then, not wanting to let her guard down and have him know her true curiosity or let him see her be vulnerable. Such machinations were gone from her now. She asked a question because she wanted to know what he would say. He knew she assumed there was an equal chance of him lying as telling the truth, and she wanted to see if she could tell the difference. But he would not lie to her. He had no reason to. Despite this, he did not answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. "What reason would I have to keep this or anything else from you now?"

Hannibal watched as Clarice struggled with this. She bought herself time by slowly sipping her wine. His tongue could remember what it tasted like on her breast and on her lips. The wine swirled inside her mouth before she swallowed it, the muscles of her pale neck flexing with the action.

He was content to wait. To watch her. He had always enjoyed watching her, and now that his work with her was not forefront of his mind, he could watch her without inhibitions. She was quite beautiful, both in repose as she was now and in passion as she was in that very seat earlier. Hannibal Lecter had always been a man to appreciate beauty in all its forms. Clarice was certainly beautiful.

"It's strange," she finally said, "talking like this."

He had not considered how it might feel for her, lacking his direction and the chemical influence assisting her. She had no ulterior motives on any case. She had never spoken to him without distinct purpose before. Hannibal did not say anything in response to her comment. He did not want to say anything, placating her by saying it would get easier or that they would practice it. After all, he did not want to lie to her. And the way forward from this was unclear to him.

Clarice continued, "I don't know if I've ever had a conversation with you that wasn't clinical in some way."

"Not for you, at least," he clarified, pleased she had reached the same conclusion he had in his own mind.

"How so?"

"Quid pro quo, Clarice," he said. The memory of those words should answer her questions.

But she shook her head. "That was a game. You were toying with me. Keeping me on the backfoot and mocking me."

"I was not fortunate enough to have much conversation of any kind in that place," he explained. "Barney was good for it sometimes. But variety is the spice of life, they say. I had not had the opportunity to speak to anyone with anything interesting to say in quite some time. I enjoyed our conversations immensely. I enjoyed learning about you in the only manner that I was allowed."

"Do you find it difficult to talk to me when you aren't working on me?" she asked. "Or whatever you want to call it, what we've been doing here all this time."

Hannibal nodded. "Working on you is probably an apt phrase. But no, I do not find it difficult to talk to you. Quite the opposite. I find talking to you to be a pleasure, Clarice."

"And the rest?"

His eyes narrowed at her, slightly displeased by the inelegant manner of her allusion to the subject she wanted to broach. He chose his words carefully, wanting to induce her into speaking her own mind. "Our time together has been very pleasurable for me. And I am fairly certain that you found pleasure of your own sitting in that very chair earlier this evening."

She blushed and averted her eyes from his face. How curious.

"Do you disagree?" he prompted, coaxing her from her sudden shyness.

Clarice looked back at him, eyes somewhat darker than they were just a minute ago. "I don't disagree, and you know it."

Hannibal smiled at her.