Please review!

Hannibal stood in the darkened phone booth that probably hadn't been used in years by the enormous presence of cobwebs. He was half surprised that the phone was still in service. Even with the early morning sunlight peering up over the horizon, the phone booth was stashed between two large brick buildings in a neighborhood that probably only went to sleep two hours earlier.

The perfect place to make small phone call without worrying about unwanted attention.

"Hello Operator, I was hoping you could wire me to a William Graham. He's a close friend of mine, and I seem to have lost his number." Hannibal's practiced Virginia accent was coming in handy. When the operator told him to hold one moment, he leaned back against the booth. "Thank you."

It didn't take long for a drowsy feminine voice to answer the phone. "Hello?"

"I'm sorry to call at this early hour. Is this Mrs. Graham?" Hannibal asked, his eyes gazing over the street.

"This is she." Molly Graham.

Hannibal smiled. "I am actually looking for Mr. Graham. I'm with the FBI, and we are having a reunion of sorts between Jack Crawford's closest friends and family. I was informed that Mr. Jack Crawford and your husband were very close when they worked together."

Molly's voice seemed to relax, almost as if it had been calmed down from a high ledge. "Thank God." Hannibal didn't have the chance to ask her why she said those words before she spoke again. "Sorry, I thought you were calling for bad news. I'm sure he would be happy to go, and it couldn't be at a better time. He's been in Virginia since September to finish some business with a few friends."

"Well, aren't we in luck." Hannibal droned. "Would you happen to have a cell phone number I could reach him at and let him know of the party?"

"Do you have a pen and paper on you?"


Stiff. That's what Clarice felt before her eyes even opened. She heard the TV, volume low. Her left side was much warmer than her right, and a pressure rested on top of her tilted head. Her arms had goosebumps, but her legs were covered. Instead of laying down, she was slumped in a sitting position that was sure to wreck havoc on her back for the day.

Then breathing. Not just hers, and she knew that other inhale and exhale of breath better than any other sound in the world.

She opened her eyes to find herself on her living room couch. The bowl of popcorn that had rested between her and Bella was tilted slightly, some of the kernels spread on her blanket. The TV played some reality cop show on a chase after someone who wouldn't pull over on the backroads of Alabama. She looked over at Bella. The walkman sat idle in her lap with the earbuds, made in an entirely different century, stuck out of her ears.

It was just starting to break daylight outside, four-thirty or five at the earliest. A few hours in her bed would hopefully ease her spine part of the day. Carefully detangling herself from Bella, she maneuvered her daughter to lay down on the couch. Using the TV as her light source, she eased the earbuds out of her ears and pulled the blanket up to Bella's shoulders. She set the walkman on the coffee table, knowing Bella would look for it once she woke up.

"Even as a teenager, your dad's voice puts you to sleep." Clarice whispered before kissing Bella's head. She turned off the television, double-checked the locks on the doors, and headed upstairs to her room.

Looking at the thick white comforter, she could feel the bed calling for her, but there was another object that seemed to beckon with a stronger sense of urgency. Opening her closet door, she grabbed the box she hadn't touched for eighteen years until yesterday when she needed a place to hide the burner phone Hannibal had given her. John Brigham's belongings sat collecting dust in the old paper package box: his badge, his gun, his FBI credentials, and a few things from his desk. With them, the small black burner phone sat.

She grabbed the device and hit call without even looking at it. There wasn't even time for her to hear the ring before the other end answered, pressed to her ear. "Good morning, Clarice."

"Good morning, Hannibal." Clarice smiled, moving to her bathroom to ready herself for the day. Maybe a long hot shower would ease the stiffness in her muscles. "I have a feeling you have news for me."

"I do actually. I believe you are beginning to develop your sixth sense, my lamb." Hannibal grinned as he sat in a rather large armchair in a bed and breakfast just outside of the city, hidden in deep trails of trees and wildlife. "Before we get into the case though, do tell me where you hid the phone I gave you."

Clarice glanced at herself in the mirror. Her red hair was slightly messy, stray hairs almost creating a thin barrier over the way she usually styled herself. The makeup she had used to cover up one of Hannibal's love bites was now gone and exposed the purple flesh between her neck and shoulder. There was a slight soreness to it, but it gave Clarice more pleasure to know it was there. "I put it in a box of an old friend's belongings. You remember John."

Hannibal briefly recalled the man who had trained his Clarice's excellent gun handling. "I do. What are you doing with a box of his things?"

"We were close." Clarice stated before reaching into the shower and turning the knobs for warm water. "He asked me a question once, and I said no. We remained friends."

"Ah, that big question. My, my Clarice. I had no idea you were that close to being an FBI woman in every sense of the word." Hannibal's voice turned metallic in a second. "Tell me, why did you say no?"

Clarice sat down on the toilet seat lid and closed her eyes. "We were never lovers, and he wasn't the one I was thinking about every day." She bit her lip when she heard his sharp exhale, but no words. "You can't tell me you went all these years we've known each other without a few partners."

Hannibal focused on a red-tailed hawk that had landed on the balcony railing outside his room. It peered around the forest with wide eyes as it ruffled its feathers. "I've had companions of sorts, never someone to refer to as a partner. Certainly not one that would request such a big commitment."

"And, me?" Clarice questioned, bringing her foot up to rest on the edge of the seat. She let her smile press into the knee against her chest.

Hannibal smiled. Bold this morning, aren't we? "If I were to ask anyone that question, it would be you. I'm curious as to what your reaction would be."

Clarice let a chuckle slip past her lips, the steam from the shower now heating her skin in another way than his words did. "I've already agreed to spend my life with you, Hannibal. Ring or no ring, I'm yours."

"As I am yours." Hannibal breathed. He could hear the shower water pelting down and didn't want to waste her water despite his enjoyment of the conversation. "I need you to track a number for me. It's a cell."

"Whose number is it?" Clarice asked as she padded back to her bedroom and grabbed the pen and paper she kept on her nightstand.

Hannibal sighed. "Will Graham's." He could all but see the surprise cross over her features. "I think your killer is after me. Whoever they are, they know Bella is my daughter. The skull lacerations to the victims are copycat actions of Paul Krendler. The gutting is Will Graham. What a mess that created at the time. Not my finest moment handling myself. The demolition of the female reproductive system has to be symbolic of you in some way. Our killer must think that having Bella is what left you a survivor of my actions. This can't be the Krendlers. If it is, they aren't doing it alone."

Clarice's shock went unnoticed by Hannibal when he mentioned the link to her. "I think I might know why."

"Why what?" Hannibal frowned.

Clarice gulped. "Uh, the shredded reproductive systems of the younger women is me." She bit her lip. This was something she had never told anyone. Only she and a few other people knew about it. The only evidence of it rested in her medical file. "When I was eight and a half months pregnant, Delia and I were getting things for Bella's nursery. As we were headed back out to her car, somebody in a hoodie and jeans came up and stabbed me, stabbed at Bella." She closed her eyes, resting a hand over the scar that Hannibal had kissed a few days earlier.

He loved her battle scars, because they were much like his. He had no idea though that the scar on her right side had nothing to do with her job. "He ran off, and Delia stayed with me to keep me from passing out. I got to the hospital quick, but the damage was done. I couldn't take much due to pregnancy, and I wouldn't allow them to prescribe me anything that could be harmful to Bella."

"The wound became infected and nearly killed Bella and I before they forced me to deliver her a week later." Clarice admitted. "The person who stabbed me was never caught, and the infection left me without the ability to conceive again."

Hannibal gripped the armrest of his chair with white knuckles, focusing his energy on not crushing the phone pressed to his ear. His breath was shallow and ragged as if allowing his lungs to completely fill would allow the rage to escape on his relief of a proper exhale. "I almost lost both of you then." The brief flare of his nose and clench of his jaw were the only outward signs of his internal struggle. "He said something to you, didn't he? When that person stabbed you, he said something to you."

Clarice glanced back into the bathroom. She couldn't see her reflection anymore with the steam clouding the mirror over the sink. "He said, 'Lecter will not live on.'" She waited for his response, but it never came. "Hannibal, please say something."

"Take down this number." Hannibal backtracked, avoiding her plead to address the topic further.

"Hannibal-"

"Clarice, take down this number." Hannibal nearly growled out.

Clarice refused to let him hear how upset she was. She silently took the number and hung up before he could say anymore. On the same paper, she wrote down the number to the burner phone Hannibal had given to himself and retreated back to her bathroom. She nearly ripped the clothes off of her and only hesitated for a moment when she heard her phone ring before stepping under the hot water.

Please review!