Hannibal felt slightly whiplashed, but it was entirely his own fault. He'd expected one thing of Maryann only to have her surprise him several times now; he ought be used to it. What he had not counted on, in his contemplations and manipulations, was the bright spirit of the little gardener. She was a fountain of the blessedly unknown, the wily, the indomitable.

She tantalized him.

Hannibal was brought out of his thoughts by Maryann's voice. She laughed quietly, not mocking; simply and incredibly amused. "Predators," she said, curled lips forming around the word. "Do not know what to make of prey who do not fear them." She flopped her scarred foot from under the cheap white blanket, evidence of the statement's truth written in lurid pink on her skin.

Hannibal was stoic, though his mind spun like a hurricane at the certain truth of her statement. He had met a few who did not fear him as a killer: other killers, mostly. Over the years he had come across a handful of people elderly enough that, when Hannibal came for them, they accepted their death with dignity as only those who could never fight back, and had little left to live for might. Even as they had pawed at his choking arm with futility, he had been able to feel the riptide of inevitability drag them under.

But a strong, young person with an entire life ahead, unphased by the revelation of his true character? A first for the cannibal, indeed. And Maryann had surely gotten an eyefull!

Where he to act wisely, he would snap this anomaly's neck in a thrice. It was natural, orderly. Were he more beast than man, he would shrug off her indifference and tear her apart, spill her blood, rend her flesh, revel in her pain and shock.

No, not shock. She was looking at him now fully knowing this confrontation could go either way: could end in her death or dismemberment or any number of worse fates, because although the entirety of the truth had not been revealed to her, she could certainly extrapolate.

But what would the other side of the coin look like?

Hannibal had never had someone in his life who knew, who was not a killer themselves. Not someone whom Hannibal let live, anyway. How many opportunities would he get for this in his existence? To witness such a convoluted mind (arguably, more twisted than his own!), wind its way around his perpetrations and try to make sense of it?

Try to accept him for what he was?

The maneater was at a crossroads far more profound than kill or be killed. He had the chance to see Maryann, who for all intents and purposes represented the rest of humanity, interact with Hannibal as he would never dare in reality. As a stand-in for the rest of mankind, he could chance to see her level her morals, sanity, safety, and emotions at his unmasked self, and judge the reaction synonymous with the one he would never get from the world.

In essence, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

"What's going on in that big brain?" she queried, gentler than the bearing of the Madonna. She peered up (when had he crossed to her bedside?) and read his face. It mildly worried Hannibal that she found scraps of his thought processes in his carefully arranged expression.

"I'm considering killing you," he replied.

Maryann graced him with a look that indicated she expected nothing less (of his considering, if not his killing). "It's flattering that you find it to be a difficult choice."

Hannibal fought the urge to shake his head at her calm. "Have you no sense of self-preservation?" he asked, more forcefully than he intended. But she was breaking all the rules of psychology, biology, and evolution with her uncontrived reception. Hannibal was allotted some measure of incredulity.

"I do," she replied, observing him as keenly as he observed her. She slowly brought a hand to his chest, slipped it under his suit front and vest, over his heart. She paused, utterly still enough to feel the beating organ underneath inches of muscle, cartilage and bone, with a faint smile. "If you were to choose a method of my disposal that gave me time, I would probably fight out of instinct." With an inhalation born of resentfulness at the statement, she continued, "But all my instincts get jumbled when confronted by you, Hannibal."

It was heartening to know he wasn't the only one. "You confound me," he murmured.

A humored light of her eyes. "Feeling's mutual."

Hannibal dared to touch her, then, capturing the errant hand in one of his. She stifled a gasp; he must have moved faster than he meant to. "If I were to let you live," he said, feeling 75 BPM under his fingertips, "And we were to continue along the current path, what motivates you in this relationship?"

Maryann acknowledged his incapability of fathoming with a gracious nod. Predators cannot think like prey, not when the prey is so unusual. But her answer did not come for some time. Her hand's heat had started to condensate against his palm by the time she sorted her feelings into words. "A chance to heal," she replied after a long, long moment. "From what he did to me."

"If you think this utter passivity will preserve you," he murmured. "You are mistaken."

A flicker of the lioness showed in her eyes. "I never promised you passivity. From what I can gather, your interest in me is due to my unpredictability."

She had him there, and he admitted it with a tip of his lips. "What you propose through implication," he began. "Cannot be worth what you claim to glean." There was no way on earth that she would acquiesce to this trans-strata level of perversion, all for the sake of healing.

Maryann knew what he sought, in that moment. It was all too easy to conjure up the soul-deep anguish woven in her ventricles, the scars unseen. She allowed every nuance of Black Sheep's perpetrations to color her tone, contort her expression, subtly shape her green eyes so that Hannibal might see and know the depth to which she needed this bizarre therapy. "I would hazard you know pain like I do," she replied. "And if it weren't already too late for you, wouldn't you do anything, anything to be rid of it?"

Hannibal's expression darkened like a cloud over the face of the sun. "I adhere to a regimen of intervention." He was amazed yet again that she'd driven a needle into the depths of his self, taken a biopsy of his innermost being. And yet again, he couldn't decide if he wanted to kill her or commend her for it.

She chuckled. "That's a horseshoes and hand grenades confession, if I've ever heard one."

Hannibal was familiar with the saying, but his levity was wearing thin. The indecision loomed.

Maryann could sense it, like animals sensed impending calamity. She folded her fingers on her stomach, huffing in meditation. "Why not decide my fate after doing what you set out to accomplish with our dinner tonight." Heat danced in her eyes.

To employ another colloquialism, she had his number. His most sinister, dangerous, and secret number. But clearly, she shared a few digits of it. "Oh, really?" he rejoined, seating himself on the edge of the bed at her hip. "And what, pray tell, did I set out to do?"

The little gardener blushed spectacularly, traitorous blood blooming under her cheeks, and bit her inner lip.

He placed a hand on the other side of her, leaning into her field of vision. "Perhaps you are more comfortable in the presence of monsters than men."

The lioness growled in her snapping green eyes. She tipped her face up to his, then: allowed their eyes to meet and hold. "I want to carve a place in my scar for you."