Return of the Lambs

Castle Lecter

A few days later.

Castle Lecter, Lithuania.

Dr Lecter and Clarice Starling stood together outside the worn gates of Castle Lecter, abandoned to time.

The castle itself was in ruin, far beyond repair.

She recalled he had mentioned that the Soviets used it as an orphanage after they liberated Lithuania, and he had been forced to grow up there, surrounded by the memories of his family, a mute boy who was punished for screaming out in the night.

She watched as his maroon eyes flared with emotion as they passed through the gates and disturbed a flock of black swans by the bank of the river.

Hannibal Lecter sighs deeply as a young girl toddles past him, vanishing into the trees.

"Mischa." He murmurs and looks down with surprise when Starling takes his hand in hers, "I can see her still, running across the grass. I can see the copper bathtub in the light and smell the flowers. I can see us leaving for the cottage and hear the planes overhead. Can you hear them, Clarice? Can you see it?"

And for a moment, she sees as he sees. A young toddler with a bracelet flashing on her wrist running after a tall, quiet boy a long the riverbank and laughing,

"'Annibal, 'Annibal. Ooh, 'Annibal."

She hears and sees war planes flying low overhead. 

There's a copper bathtub nearby, just big enough for the baby and around it are purple plants.

Clarice drew back into herself.

"I see it, Dr Lecter."

He closed his eyes and smiled.

A single dart struck him and he collapsed on the river bank where he and Mischa stood once, so many years before.

"Hannibal!"

Without thinking, Clarice Starling covered his body with her own as a pale woman appeared from the ruins wielding a gun.

"You should leave him." The Japanese woman said as she approached, "He is a monster, a poisonous snake."

Clarice snarled as she drew closer.

"Keep away from him...shooting a man with his back turned. Where's the honour in that?"

She fumbled in his pocket, knowing he'd have something to use as a weapon.

"Don't you know who this is? This is Hannibal Lecter. He'll kill you in the end. It's better this way."

Clarice lashed out with the key in her hand, momentarily startling her assailant enough to sweep her legs out from beneath her and grab the gun.

The woman barked a long stream of Japanese.

From the ground, the body began to laugh and Dr Lecter sat up and pulled the dart from his back.

"Clarice, you passed the test admirably. This is Chiyoh. She was my aunt's maid when I lived in France as a young man. My aunt is no longer among us and Chiyoh here was in Europe when I contacted her. I wanted to test you, to see if you would truly risk your life for my own."

Clarice shoved him back down and pointed the gun at his face.

"Don't ever do that to me again. I thought you were dead."

He stared at her in silence and knocked her legs out from underneath her, darting out of the way of the gun and grunting slightly when she landed on top of him, stopped only by his hands on her arms.

"I love you. This is my design, this is all I ever wanted for us, Clarice. For us to be together at the place, the moment, the teacup shattered. I love you because you see me and you aren't afraid."

"I don't know how I feel about you, doctor, but God knows I waited so long to see you again."

Dr Lecter stroked Clarice's face, murmured softly to her and kissed her before she could protest, not that she would have done, not anymore.

"Say it for me," he said ardently, "just once, let me hear it from your lips, Clarice."

As they stared deeply at one another, they did not see the figures moving in the shadows, didn't hear the faint cry from Chiyoh as she was dragged away.

"I love you, Hannibal."

In the shadows, the figures nodded.

Two bullets was all it took.

The silence of the lambs would forever remain unbroken.