Note: So last night I treated myself to my first viewing of King Arthur, and the long short of it, I couldn't resist writing another chapter of the fantasy element of the story before we become Earthbound again. Guilty as charged...


"Before we begin, I need to show you something."

"Very well," Will replied. "I'm almost passed being surprised by anything I've seen since our end," he smiled, a touch rueful.

"This is good," Hannibal replied. "You will need to lose all vestiges of your former self before we can begin guiding Michael down his own path of discovery."

Will did not flinch as Hannibal placed a cool hand on his chest, where his heart would have been. "Close your eyes…"


"He looks at you the way his hawk looks at her meat before she tears a chunk from her prey."

Galahad glanced at Dag, who was looking at him slyly as he spoke in hushed tones. Celebrations for their last day in servitude were in full swing and wine and ale was flowing faster than the nearby river rapids. Galahad didn't have to look down the table to know to whom he was referring.

"The man can't stand me, nor I him. This is our last night together as Knights of the Round Table. Let us not mar it by speculating on Tristan's… proclivities, shall we, Dag?"

"Humph," he replied, as he returned his smiling gaze to the celebration dance underway nearby. Galahad looked at Tristan then, but the man's attention was lost in the eyes of his hawk…


Galahad stood above the bowl of water gazing at the reflection staring back at him, the expression of a man weary and defeated. Where only moments ago, his freedom, after 15 years in servitude to the Romans had been assured, those assurances had come crashing down around him. Arthur had asked them to undertake one final task. He wondered if Fate would dole out the ultimately cruelty and ensure it was indeed his last.

He reached for the knife, jutting out from the vertical beam next to him. In that moment, he felt it vibrate and snapped his head around to see another similar blade, embedded in the base of its handle.

He didn't turn to see the intruder as he spoke. "By all the Unholy Gods, Tristan, is it too much to ask that you control the urge to rid me of parts of my body when I least suspect it? It's enough of a challenge keeping our enemies at bay," he said, exasperation in his tone.

He bent down and cupped his hands to splash water on his face. By the time he was done with the brief ritual, Tristan was leaning against the beam, one arm folded across his chest, the other arm's hand, holding out a dry cloth. Galahad frowned at him as he snatched it from him. He turned his bare back to Tristan - a measure of the regard and trust in which these men held each other - and moved to retrieve his shirt from his bed.

"You were about to shave off your beard. I thought to discourage that plan."

Galahad paused for the briefest of moments in doing up his shirt. It irritated him no end that Tristan could read him so well. "Why?"

He shrugged lightly. "It suits you." He paused, as though thinking better of the comment. "And were you to remove it, you would look like a 12-year-old boy. Romans the length and breadth of Britain would be lining the valleys to make you their own," he said, with a knowing smirk.

Not five years ago, such a comment would have resulted in Galahad drawing his sword and teaching the man a lesson. Or at least try to. Grudgingly, he had to admit, he had learned many valuable combat skills under his watchful eye.

Instead, he strolled up to Tristan in his unmoved, leaning position against the beam and stood before him. "What better way to get my opponent to drop his guard? Thinking he's facing down a ripe, young boy on the verge of manhood before I gut him with the edge of my blade?"

Tristan's eyes visibly darkened, watching him closely but guarded through the auburn locks that covered much of his features. "Mmmm. Perhaps you do take a little pleasure from the kill, Galahad. Much as you try to deny it to yourself and others."

Galahad remained silent as he turned away, only to have Tristan reach for him, reflexes lightning quick, and grab his wrist before the young man retreated.

"We each fight our demons in our own way," he said, eyes hard as steel.

Galahad wrenched his wrist from his grip, feeling the after effects of Tristan's touch tingle up his arm. "While others would embrace them with wanton abandon…," he replied through gritted teeth.

Tristan moved then to block him bodily. "I am not the demon here, Galahad. I, at least, know who and what I am."

He lifted his head stubbornly. "And I don't? I sit at Arthur's table, equal to every other knight with the same honour!"

Tristan leaned towards him and whispered. "You are a child amongst men." He could see the seething in Galahad's expression but admired his unwavering stance nonetheless.

Galahad's tone was low and threatening. "Were we not in need of every single body we had for this Saxon suicide mission, I'd gut you were you stand."

"And, you would probably find pleasure in that as well," replied Tristan smoothly, his mood switching easily back to calm and unthreatening. Galahad blinked. The change was so quick, his brain barely had time to process their exchange.

Tristan took a small step back, maintaining his position between Galahad and the door. "Tell me, Brother Knight. What was your very first impression of me when we met at Camelot? The first word that entered your head?"

"Arrogant," he said, without hesitation.

Tristan smiled. "Perhaps you mistake arrogance for confidence. Easily done by such a young and impressionable mind."

Galahad allowed the constant references of youth and inexperience to wash over him. "And you, Tristan. Your first impression of me?"

"Curious."

"What do mean by cur—?" Galahad found his words cut off by the sudden positioning of Tristan's lips on his own. He barely had to time to process the event - and event it was, as every nerve in his body pulsed long and bright for the duration of their mutual exploration.

Tristan released him. "And I see I was correct in my impression," he said, smiling, as he retreated from the room, leaving a bewildered young knight alone to contemplate what had just happened.


Galahad walked through the blood-soaked field and surveyed the carnage. The battle was won, the Saxons overcome but the cost was great. He looked up to see the hawk circling above, before falling to his knees beside the prone body of his brother-in-arms. He felt his heart slow, and stop, for nothing more than a beat. Death by a thousand cuts would surely be less agonising than this…

Will reeled back from Hannibal and the force of the memory. Nothing he'd imagined had ever felt so real.

"Because it was real," Hannibal said quietly, reading his thoughts. "You and I are bound through eternity, Will. Each incarnation is unique, but we always find each other, lose each other, find each other again, as we have done through countless lifetimes."

He took both his hands in his own. "We are close now, to finding rest and peace from our mortal incarnations."

Will nodded, the echoes of images and the associated emotion still bouncing through the atoms in his aura. "Show me more?" he asked, hesitant in the question as though unsure he wanted to see more.

"All in good time," said Hannibal. "We have a lot of it after all. Our last incarnations brought us closer than ever, hence why we now find ourselves here. And whenever we are in need of such, this is where one will find the other."

Will regained his composure and spoke with a quiet determination. "What do we have to do?"