Silence shields the pain.

Silence also gives one the necessary space to reflect and remember, to criticize and condemn. The easiest thing in this world is to be afterwise and at the same time it is the most tempting. What if, what if. What if I hadn't done that or said this? What if I hadn't gone there or been here?

What if?

It's tormenting and useless to dwell in made mistakes but so is the human nature it's almost impossible to avoid. Even the most intelligent and civilized of men easily tosses all his knowledge and skill on different fields of life out of the window and deliberately gets buried in the never-ending circle of what if.

Silence shields the pain and so the silence was everywhere. No voice or sound of any kind was allowed to interfere it. No talk, no music, no nothing. Only the silence which was both in the house and in the mind of a man once again occupying it. Silence in the room in which she lay.

The thick drapes in front of the windows kept the sunlight out, keeping the room as dark as a sealed tomb. Dr. Lecter felt the day mocked him and did not wish to have any reminder of it.

Days turned into nights which turned into days and they all melted together, forming a time and space separate from the outside world. There was no outside world; there was only the dark room and the silence.

Very much like that of between heartbeats.

Or that after the heartbeats have stopped.

When he had gained consciousness after the short lack of it on the faithful night, the sight that met him had wanted him to wish for death. To see her lying on the ground covered with blood, face pale and lips bluish, had been the most dreadful sight of his life. The next second, bringing with itself the realization that she was indeed alive and not dead, had thrown him on the other side of the emotional range. Luckily her wound had been severe but not fatal, and he had been able to treat her himself.

Had she died…

No. Don't go there.

This was all so familiar, like an expanded déja-vu. She in the bed, he treating her. Guarding her, sheltering her. Only this time the slightly hopeful anticipation was placed by the dark, suffocating desperation. Fear of the future is the greatest fear of all.

The irony of the situation made him want to laugh and it made him want to cry. Clarice, injured and hurt, when all he ever wanted to do was to protect her from those very things. Clarice, shot and wounded because of him.

Because of his weakness, because of his failure.

And when she would wake up from her rest, what would await for her? The exact same feeling he had experienced when he had seen her limp body on the ground. Heart-stopping, suffocating pain brought about by the realization that everything has its end – and unfortunately there is life after it. For those who are left behind the fresh water of life turns into a bitter wine.

The fact that he was about to cause that to her made him bitterly regretted he had came back.

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She came back to her sense little by little, drifting a long time in the middle of dream and reality. During the moments she was awake she sensed the stillness of the surrounding space, but above all, she sensed she wasn't alone. She sensed him and it made her feel… Nervous. Scared.

Exhilarated.

*

A soft sigh coming from the bed woke Dr. Lecter, sleeping lightly in the chair, up. In a few seconds he was next to her, quickly checked everything was as it supposed to be and then sat down on the edge of the bed. She was coming along and he wanted to be next to her when she did; God knows he had left her alone too much as it was.

Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes. He saw the glister of them though the room was dark. For a second it looked like she had had tears in her eyes though he knew it wasn't so.

"How are you feeling?" His voice was soft. Worried, perhaps.

Clarice closed her eyes again. She felt dizzy and nauseous and needed all of her concentration to form speech.

The voice leaving her pale lips was only a whisper. "What happened?"

Dr. Lecter took her delicate hand into his own and squeezed it faintly. "I'll tell you later."

Clarice peered her eyes and looked into his direction. "Are you…" A few seconds of silence. "Here to stay?" She didn't let her fear nor her hope show in her voice.

Dr. Lecter hesitated for a while before he answered and hoped that she didn't notice. "Yes, I am, Clarice. I'm… Here to stay."

As Clarice fell back asleep again Dr. Lecter rose very carefully. He placed her hand on her chest were it rose and lowed, synchronized with her breathing.

^^^^^^^^^^*^^^^^^^^^^

Her recovery had been unbelievably fast. It hadn't been very long and she was already up, though not very long periods of time. Most of the time she spent in their bed – in which she hadn't slept after he had left. It was weird for her now to be back in it. He didn't sleep next to her, and Clarice didn't know why. Was it because of her injury or because he just didn't want to? Or maybe it was because of something else, something she wasn't sure if she even wanted to know.

Whatever it was, it was between them. Pretty much everything was, these days – Clarice had found that there was a new level of distance between them. Actually distance wasn't the right word but it was the best she could think of; something had changed and she had a feeling that the change wasn't good.

^^^^^^^^^^*^^^^^^^^

He was sitting in front of the piano when she came downstairs. The cover was open but he didn't play, just sat there his hands in his lap. Now that she came to think of it he hadn't played the piano for all the time he had been back.

She walked into the room and sat down on a chair next to him. Uncountable were the times when she had sat in that very same chair and listened to him play, just listened. Sometimes, for hours.

As if he had heard her thoughts he turned to look at her. His face softened.

"Good morning, Clarice."

"Good morning."

They looked at each other, not knowing where to start. There were too much to say.

Clarice broke the eye contact and let her look wander around the spacious room. Her stare stopped on the faint stain on the carpet.

"Is he dead? Luca?"

"Yes."

"I thought so." She didn't feel anything.

Dr. Lecter stood up and walked to the window. The pale morning light greeted him with its white fingers touching him through the glass.

Clarice looked at him from where she was sitting. She had so much to ask; so much she wanted to know… And now, as the moment had arrived, she found it was so hard to speak. Yet she did.

"Hannibal…" She thought for a moment. "What happened? On that night?"

His voice was calm. "You tell me. I wasn't… around when all the action took place."

Clarice didn't look at his direction when she answered. "He was going to shoot you."

"And you took the bullet for me?"

Her silence was enough answer.

Dr. Lecter closed his eyes for a while. Brave Clarice… And yet so foolish. Save something that was already doomed.

Her voice was quieter than before. "Now you tell me, Hannibal. You tell me what happened to you. And… Why you left the way you did." He heard how she stood up. "If I'm not very off track, they're related."

He remained quiet. How could he ever tell her?

"Hannibal?" There was demand in her voice.

Her footsteps stopped behind him. Her hand on his arm.

Voice no more than a whisper and yet it held terrible strength. "Tell me."

He looked at her and his eyes were soft, softer than ever before. He put her hand on her face and caressed her cheek with her forefinger.

"Do you really want to know, Clarice? Do you want to know why I walked out on you? Why I lost consciousness?"

Words would have been inadequate; she nodded. The fear she felt shone from her eyes. Still nothing could have prepared her for what he was about to say.

A moment of silence like no other.

Later, as Clarice reflected back on that moment being able to name it as the worse of her life, she realized that that silence had been the last she'd ever experience. There were no complete silence after it; the knowledge was always present, whispering in her ear.

The last silence of her life was broke by the words she never would have wanted to hear.

Dr Lecter's voice, so soft and silent. "I have cancer. I'm going to die."

She stared at him and from her eyes he saw she didn't understand. Didn't accept.

She shook her head as if waking up from her thoughts and closed her eyes for a while. "What?" Her voice revealed the information had started to sink in.

"I'm dying, Clarice." He tried to be as gentle and calm as possible but to see the shock and pain the upcoming realization caused her was almost too much.

World slowed its rotation then, at least that's how it felt for her.

Cancer.

All her guesses, all her wondering, all her worst scenarios… They had all been wrong and none of them had been this bad.

Die.

She shook her head. "No." There was a determination coming from desperation in her voice.

He just stared at her, the look in his eyes so soft and sad. The red pinpoints had stopped their dance and the maroon was just maroon, his look was so soft, the pinpoints were gone, his eyes were just eyes and he was just a man, a mortal man and he would die, die, die DIE DIE

"NO!!! It's not true!" She screamed to his face still so sad and tears ran down on her face. "You are not going to die, do you hear me? NOT!!"

His arms around her now, holding her against the steady beat of his heart, and her tears wet his shirt.

They stood like that for a long time.

When her tears had run out he took her face between his hands. Gently he kissed her cheeks, drinking her salty tears. She kept her eyes closed even when he spoke.

His voice was raspy. "I'm so sorry, Clarice."

She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes. Even now, her eyes swollen from crying and face wet from tears, she was beautiful. Her voice wasn't altogether steady.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

He released his hold of her face and turned around. "It doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

He had walked to the sofa and sat down. "I didn't wish to… be a burden to you."

Clarice couldn't help just staring at him in disbelief. Burden? For the love of God… "How can anyone as intelligent as you be so stupid?" She didn't actually mean to say it but it just slipped out of her mouth.

He gave her a sarcastic look. "I appreciate that, Clarice."

"Sorry. But do you even understand what you're saying? How could you ever be a burden to me? My God, even the word makes me want to laugh. Do you have so little faith in us?" There was a certain level of accusation in her voice.

Dr. Lecter didn't answer right away. He seemed to be buried in his thoughts. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant and the look in his eyes was focused in something visible only for him. "Do you know what it feels like to be betrayed by your own body? When the mind is the same but the flesh starts to fail? To feel your own decay?" He blinked a few times and shook his head slightly, waking up from his mental world.

Pointing his maroon eyes to her he continued. Now his voice was as strong as ever. "I'm going to die, Clarice. Soon. I wanted to spare you from it, because, I assure you, it's not going to be pretty. I didn't want you to remember me as a sick man chained to his bed and I didn't want you to chain yourself into me. I know that you, with your high levels of moral and ethics, would stand by me till the end. Because it's the right thing to do."

She shook her head. "No, I wouldn't."

He arched an eyebrow. "No?"

She walked to him. "Not because it's the right thing to do. Because it is what I want to do."

She sat next to him and put her hand into his. "You're not a wild animal, Hannibal. You can't crawl into a cave and die. It's not the way it works."

He was about to answer but she didn't let him; putting her finger on his mouth she shut him up. "No, now you're listening to me. Do you even realize what you put me through when you left? I didn't know what I had done wrong, what drove you away from me. Why you didn't love me anymore. I went through hell, and because of what? Because of the demons in your head. You thought I would have stood by you out of obligation. You let your own fear towards your mortality to become as my fear for it. I refuse to act the way you have predicted. You don't owe me, Hannibal, or rule my actions. You don't have the right to do that. Yet you did so by doing the decision for me. And you chose wrong." Tears were running down on her face again. "I will not think less of you even if you are ill. I will not think less of you because you are mortal, a man. I will never, ever think less of you because of anything and you know why? Because I love you, I LOVE you, and don't you dare to deny it by walking away from me." Her voice broke.

He pulled her to him and held her like their lives had depended on it. Her scent in his nostrils, the feel of her body against his own… He realized that right here, in his arms, he had everything he could ever ask for life. He had had everything.

On the next night they shared a bed once again, and everything was right in the world.

For now.