After the performance, a dark solitary figure makes his way to his car, a black Sedan, and heads to a house far from the city.
Once there, he turns off his car and changes the license plate in a very spacious garage. Then he enters the house, flipping on the light and bathing his face in light.
His face is tired, but amused. He has dark, sleek hair and dark eyes, cold and inhuman. He is short, but powerful. Beneath the White button up shirt and impeccable black jacket are arms that hold a wiry strength in them that was not to be tampered with lightly.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter enters his large kitchen, remarkably clean with a very faint, yet delicious smell of lavender. He removes his jacket and places it carefully on one of the chairs in his nearby dining room, the table a fine carved mahogany worthy of a king.
Back into the kitchen, he is searching for something to eat. But what to satisfy the pallet of a monster? After a bit of digging around in this kitchen he resurfaces with a small meal of rare steak and mushrooms, in need only of a little heating. He knows that he should have eaten out tonight and spared himself the task of eating leftovers, but what he had experienced tonight was worth it.
Tonight he was able to watch Clarice fight her inner demons and wage a war with her definitions of right and wrong. He was able to toy with her tonight without so much as lifting a finger to do so.
His tongue played on his fork for a few moments before he put away his plate. He was tired. All the traveling he had done lately was finally getting him. He had had no rest since renting this house as he had been busy contacting Ms. Starling. He believed he now deserved a good night's sleep now, especially since he wasn't planning on sending another letter tonight.
He cleaned up the little mess he'd made that night and went into his living room. Awaiting him there was a piano that had been rented along with the house. He sat down on the stool and let his fingers rest on the keys for a few moments, getting a feel for it and then he began to play. The Goldberg Variations, one of his favorites.
As he played his mind wandered into itself. He soon found himself inside his memories. His memory palace, actually. He wandered down a long hallway. Below him he walked on a long Persian rug that had once decorated his mother's room.
He passed along the cool statue of Venus, and into one of his favorite wings, one dedicated to Ex-Special Agent Clarice Starling. It was a beautiful wing, the finest lighting coming from its multiple windows and passages. It had many passages, making it a very complex wing, perhaps to match the woman it was dedicated to.
Back in the house his fingers on the piano began to drift from their assigned chords and spun off on their own to a new song, one born from his separate attention to his memories of a woman.
In his memory palace he entered one of the passages in Clarice's wing, and down a dark hall to a room of Crimson. The stone was dark, yet the floor and windows were draped with a soft crimson silk. This room was devoted to one memory he could feel at any time of his desire. Feel? Yes, he doesn't view memories the way we do. He feels them with his whole being. He is able to put himself into the memory and relive them when he chooses through the use of his elaborate memory palace.
In this room he was able to put himself in a moment form two years ago, where he had the woman of this wing pinned to a refrigerator, where she was seemingly defenseless. But rather than yielding to his will, she chose to fight like the warrior she was and handcuff him to her. Chain him to her. To escape he was forced to cut off his own hand. But why his and not hers? Not even now could he use his prosthetic hand as well as he would have liked, but it was worth it.
That night he had felt her lips against his, and he had felt her strong will and determination flowing through her and to him as if they had been one for only those few moments. And that was what the room he was in was dedicated to. It was dedicated to those few seconds.
Inside the crimson room was a single painting. He had chosen it because it suited the moment the room represented. It was a large painting of Judas, hanging with his bowels in from a dead tree. Oh, how it suited the room.
Again, back in the house his fingers, real and prosthetic, danced upon the keys to play his new song of Clarice. One that he will decide to play in the crimson room.
A/N: Sorry about the short chapter, folks. To make it up to you the next one will be longer.