Chapter Text
Will Graham dreams of dying every other night. Dying in the arms of a monster, having destroyed himself to take it down, while surrendering himself to him at the same time. It would have been the ultimate Pyrrhic victory, for both of them. It would have been comforting. He wakes up, instead, still wretchedly alive, with the monster, the man breathing evenly in the adjacent room. Will can feel Hannibal's consciousness filling the spaces between them like black ink in water. Theirs is exacty the sort of untenable, unreedemable situation that religious leaders had in mind when describing hell, or what awaits a life of wickedness.
Those nights he wakes up and makes his way barefoot to Hannibal's room.
"Have you come to kill me?" Hannibal asks, no tension in his body.
"No. Not tonight, Hannibal. Go back to sleep. I can feel your thoughts swirl around me."
"And what does that feel like?"
"Like I am cocooned, lying in wait. What are you thinking about?"
"I found my thoughts wandering back to Jack Crawford's late wife, Bella."
"What about her?"
"I gave her an unwanted second chance at life. I do wonder if her first death would have been more apt than the one that followed."
"Like with us, you mean?"
"Not quite. We still have the chance to be reborn."
Will shuffles closer and sits down on the bed over the covers. "Reborn as what?"
"The exact parameters, I suspect, will reveal themselves in time. In the meantime ..."
"You want me to join you", Will gestures beneath the covers "inside the womb?"
"I do."
"You are aware that embryos that share a womb occasionaly end up as one absorbing the other?"
"Ah, yes, the Vanishing Twin Syndrome. And which one would be you, Will? Are you going to absorb or be absorbed?" Hannibal asks with a flash of teeth.
"It doesn't make a difference. Either way, we are one."
Will slides under the covers, like going underwater. He is asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow and Hannibal's arms come softly around him.