Authors Notes: I do alot of these 1word prompts to describe a couple's interaction, and this one, is dedicated to my friend Tom whose birthday is today: Happy Birthday!

Fandom: Hannibal Rising
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter x Lady Murasaki
Theme:Beta
Rating: Pg-13 to R for mature/violence.'
Warning: a few spoilers.

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#01 – Walking:
It happened during a pubescent nightfall: the fires burned inside one elongated window where a lady slid translucent drapes aside; an oval face in the cream-colored snow of the cool night gazed intently as Hannibal made himself known: a youth coming into a phase of aspiration as one of the heirs of Lecter's estate, and he paused there under the moonlight; her exotic beauty held him in mid-flight; an awkwardness belied the drum beating beneath his chest, walking upon cold ground into a cultured lady's life, deciding conclusively in his dormant heart – he'd fallen in love.

#02 – Waltz:
She had taught him how to dance, with sleek measured paces; a slow moving magnetic sway holding their bodies close; their fingers electric as the touch of flesh crackled in the atmosphere, and Hannibal was mesmerized - his heavy steps followed feathered slippers on soft Parisian carpet.

#03 Wishes:
He dropped a wish into an invented well in his mind; the sound of a haunted echo pricking against a landscape of damp old brick and moss, cascading into the depths below; the resonance sighed against Lecter's vibrant blood; it synapsed his longing while he faced Lady Murasaki's glorious dark eyes.

#04 – Wonder:
The Ambassador's daughter wasn't a fool; hitherto, she, after all these years, couldn't tear her eyes away from the young Hannibal, whose incredibly intense personality was full of surreptitious mystery.

#05 – Worry:
His fingers, long, slender, and undeniably masculine, raked through the lengthy strands of her silky hair, whispering in a deep silky tone: "Don't be troubled," Hannibal's sharp blue eyes held her captive, suspended like a fly in web, "I'll take care of everything.."

#06 – Whimsy:
When he killed, Hannibal did it with inborn talent; young Lecter didn't do it spontaneously, and she had begun to see how his methods were beyond anything human.

#07 - Waste/Wasteland:
It was such a waste, really, he remarked quietly in the busy echo of his active mind; Hannibal could see the drones of wasted land filling up with human carcasses; he felt all the ones he would cut up were in need of rehabilitation, at least to a pretended afterlife; but, he wouldn't give a pound of flesh to his lady, even if the skins tasted with a kind of salty baleful pleasure.

#08 - Whiskey and rum:
The remorseful victim was afraid, so very afraid and in a last attempt to save his own pathetic life, he turned pleading eyes to the beautiful widow; yet, she, sitting there in a mournful trance, couldn't stop Hannibal in his mad obsession; so she watched as her ward pour the hot brand of fire whiskey down the throat of the roped 'prey', listening to the gurgles of painful screams and all the while, the doctor smirked, saying smoothly: "I think now you'll see that the flesh can be so weak when it comes to the temptation of alcohol, don't you agree?," and poured himself a small crystal glass of rum, swallowing the contents before he set to work.

#09 – War:
"The war killed young Lecter, and what came to birth is a monster," - this was what the Inspector was telling Lady Murasaki; except, she knew better, the growing sadness reflecting from the depths of her psyche gave the detective a pregnant silence.

#10 – Weddings:
Lady Murasaki was blessed with a beautiful wedding when she accepted his aristocratic uncle, now deceased, Hannibal placidly considered; his eyes scanning pictures of her vibrant young face and his uncle's happiness; sporting a pleased expression, his steady blood dried fingers turned the pages of old rice paper in an album filled with the past: photographs of his lovely mistress and the Count.

#11 – Birthday:
Many birthdays had passed in Lady Murasaki's new home; the Parisian manor held countless private parties between her and her ward - in those mirages of past celebrations: a pubertal Hannibal, blew out another candle each year- emptying his heart to her and a hovering ghost of a long dead sister.

#12 – Blessing:
Sometimes, a curse of bad luck can be a blessing in disguise, he said to her quietly; his lashes closed over his eyes, giving him a sensual look, and she couldn't help but wonder if that blessing was him that he talked about.

#13 – Bias:
The Inspector was getting on Lady Murasaki's bad side, and though she was a cultured lady through and through, she couldn't deny the words that spilled out of her mouth, defending her nephew, "Don't you think, that you're wasting your time here, Inspector? Perhaps you're being quite prejudice in the case of my late husband's last beneficiary?"

#14 – Burning:
She felt the heat singing her gentle flesh as he pushed into her body, friction against damp satin sheets; hands gripped hers in a vise grip and firm hips – naked, catching hot, slick sweat.

#15 – Breathing:
He breathed against the white column of her silky neck, tongue gliding skillfully down to the valley of her pedantic breasts, subsequently kissing lightly there, until Hannibal moved above her to stare into her eyes, "I love you," and say it with honest conviction.

#16 – Breaking:
"Do you really know what love is?" She inaudibly questioned, after witnessing his brutal act with another human being; "Do you really know because I think you had lost your will to love…" and she felt her heart tear within when he couldn't answer.

#17 – Belief:
Lady Murasaki wanted to show him what she believed in: she opened up her soul to Hannibal in a private room filled with her ancestors and deities she respected; he could find solace in the verity that she trusted him with all her life.

#18 – Balloon:
She almost screamed when she saw the butcher's head placed there on her sanctified altar by her would-be hero: bloodied empty eyes motionlessly stared out from its sockets on a resplendent silver platter like a biblical offer; and Lecter walked quietly behind her, which brought her active imagination to blow up like a balloon, concluding something horrible.

#19- Balcony:
An evening mist rode on a magic carpet, tiptoeing its way to her balcony; and Hannibal stood there at the bottom, an awed expression on his youthful features, as he'd never felt or seen anything so beautiful in his life, excepting that of the invisible bond between him and his tragic sister.

#20 – Bane:
He left Lady Murasaki behind, left her to mull silently in a naive cocoon Hannibal devised for her, at least for the moment; and he believed that she would understand why he had to do what he had to do: to take out all those men on a blacklist – the dogs that feasted on baby Mischa; and he knew that the honorable lady wouldn't mind, after all, these men were the bane of all existence.

#21 – Quiet:
"Shhhh, everything will be alright, Hannibal," her melodious foreign accent strained for him to hear out of the depths of his nightmare; she continued: "Tell me, Hannibal, what happened to Mischa?"

#22 – Quirks:
She left him some money so he could continue his medical career, to become a very good doctor; though, she couldn't know her future doctor Lecter had so many quirks, and one of those - an acquired taste for human flesh.

#23 – Question:
"It's a matter of consequence, mind you, my dearest Lady," Hannibal smoothly replied, his head nodding slightly as he lifted a glass of wine in tribute, "but the question is, if the Inspector has reason to believe that I am responsible, without acknowledging his own history, then, is he not as guilty as I am?"

#24 – Quarrel:
The polished lady couldn't argue with her ward; she was too cultured to discuss anything too vile; however, how could she be so blind to the acts he liked to commit, and still - coming home with blood in his hands?

#25 – Quitting
He thought about it: to quit, for her; but the cries of silent lambs waiting to be slaughtered were tearing his soul and he just couldn't.

#26 – Jump
As he held the samurai blade in his hand, Hannibal jumped back at the approaching attack from his lady; a practiced exhibition of hit and defend as his lady said breathlessly: "You must always be ready for your enemy."

#27 – Jester:
"The jokes on me, Inspector," the young Lecter laconically replied, his predatory eyes darting back and forth to the lady and the detective: "Because, last I heard, that man ate my little sister, now can you say the same thing with your own family and the war in the same breath?"

#28 – Jousting:
Hannibal's silky dark locks fell over his greedy eyes, as the joust between him and Lady Murasaki came to a end; the hand to hand combat was extensive, rigorous and quite gratifying; he pushed them away from his arrested face, closing in on the lady with a determined new passion.

#29 – Jewel:
His trembling hand held the sparkling bracelet that once belonged to his sister, and Hannibal looked at the lady across him, a haunted voice croaked renewed vengeance: "That man, with the daughter, he was one of them…and he kept my sister's jewels to give away…"

#30 – Just:
The Inspector was incredibly suspicious, his usual air of decorum deadpan with all the evidence facing him: The young Hannibal had no remorse for all the things he'd done, and the sophisticated lady from Japan was hiding everything she knew, taking all the just and right things that should be.

#31 – Smirk:
The easy leer that came to Hannibal as he carved the letter "M" on Grutas's chest was unmistakable, having no fear, and the heart of an avenging god; conversely, that expressive display didn't make things easier for Lady Murasaki.

#32 – Sorrow:
His sorrow was great; he had a lot weighing on his mortal soul, and she felt that, holding him close to her breast after one of his nightmarish bouts.

#33 – Stupidity:
There are some people in this world that need to die horribly – he grimly told her, because they aren't fit to live, and because their stupidity knows no bounds.

#34 – Serenade:
He liked classical music from the first moment he heard it; as a child with his parent's belongings, he had been cultured to understand a little of its beauty; conversely, with Lady Murasaki, he'd come to fully appreciate the serenading style of its attraction even in another language.

#35 – Sarcasm:
"Why, do you think I would do such a thing?" a cynical expression replaced doctor Lecter's former expression, and he turned to his lady, and there his cynicism changed; the Inspector wasn't sure how to understand this – Hannibal would do anything for her, but would he stop – only to pause at the ridiculous musing when Hannibal continued: "Blood and flesh, what are those men worth anyway? Better off dead wouldn't you say?"

#36 – Sordid:
The tearing was the sound of human flesh being ripped apart; shrieks of pain reverberated in the hollow halls and crevices outside the laboratory as doctor Lecter kept up his grueling and inexorable task; a duty that the lady thought too cruel even for a war torn thief from the past.

#37 – Soliloquy
She would remain by his side, when the authorities come around, asking about Lecter's connection with the butcher whose head was missing; and linger by him she will, even in her silent soliloquy, however haunted it was.

#38 – Sojourn
They would stop over at a private Inn on the way when they get out of town, at least to get away for awhile from the dogged perseverance of the authorities.

#39 – Share
Hannibal shared many things with Lady Murasaki, not least of all, his dark character bared like Hors d'oeuvres to foretaste.

#40 - Solitary
When he saw the woman he first fell in love with, he was a young man - young enough to feel the tugging insistence of hormonal growth; yet, as she stood there, solitary in her exotic beauty, a fragile mortal inside the large home, away from the falling snowflakes of the night – he couldn't prepare for the onslaught of lessons, and raw emotion that spiked through him: respectability, an unusual love, diligence and the natural stylishness he would inherit thereafter.

#41 – Nowhere:
As she was being held captive by Grutas, the cultured Japanese woman would still her tongue, until Hannibal came for her; consequently, becoming frantic as her hero would later feel the blade cut through his legs – immobilizing him for those long torturous moments; he watched his lady get mauled by his enemy, feeling he wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to slicing that brute if he didn't get the fuck up.

#42 – Neutral:
In cases like this, when her young lover dirtied his hands with murder, she felt a paroxysm of neutrality – it was something that kept her silent until, by a stroke of some parallel universe, Hannibal chose to halt the executions.

#43 – Nuance:
With every degree of trust he entrusted in her, she could feel her own ebbing away like the salt sea leaving a shore until the next full moon.

#44 – Near:
His soothing voice was hypnotic, and his elegant bloody hands touched dirty things; the presence of his near inexplicable soul was forbidding and callous, but the stylish foreign Lady could only see the young man she came to love.

#45 – Natural:
The feathered soft brunette hair, combed back in a stylish manner, gleamed with touches of golden brown; it was such a natural thing, the way he moved there in the sunlight, all smiles and a dimpled look that she couldn't believe he could harm a single fly.

#46 – Horizon:
The budding sunrise from the east called to Lady Murasaki's spirit; she was going to go home to her homeland; the empty wake of her leaving would be remembered by a man whose singular obsession was to keep a promise to a little girl.

#47 – Valiant:
She fought side by side and against him with authentic swords created for the calling of a true samurai; however, as clanging noise of blade on blade rung between them, the fearless pools of his bold eyes were of a hopeful innocent.

#48 – Virtuous:
A bath was made in the big empty house; running water sounded like the trickling brook that ran along her home in Japan, and she was going to make Hannibal see: her virtue finally would be his, if he would honor her in return.

#49 – Victory:
It was a victorious task he'd done today – the slow easy grin widened as he sliced; making such a satisfying crunch, so that the dead man's blood smeared across Hannibal's cheeks brought a sweet rosy pallor: proof of painted glory after a kill, and he'd go home to his lady with the prized head.

#50 – Defeat:

It was so uncannily tranquil inside Hannibal's laboratory; not a single soul stirred in the entire complex; and only when she bravely peeked in through the window of those double doors, did she spot Hannibal's figure standing over an enclosed watery grave – the sound of a defeated howl resonated from below him, startling her with an uneasy sensation.