I can't live with you,

Can't live without you.

Oh, oh, oh.

What if we went back, oh?

To the house that death built.

What if we went back to the house that death built?

Waters, churning, endless hunger.

We came from water, did you know? All life began there, in the violent here-and-there, crash-and-thrash, sucking depths and dragging darkness. First life, breath, consciousness; legs came to us, soon, and we're told that we crawled onto earth and learned to straighten spine and raise our eyes towards the sun, but: what if we didn't? Crashing water, watery limbs grasping arms and pulling down, down, down. What if the ocean spat us out, despondent and disgusted, but we crawled back to her belly and begged to suckle? What if we developed legs so we could fall to our knees and beg to come back home, to slip beneath the rocking waves that didn't want us anymore, that cast us aside and told us: go, go, go.

Then, isn't the ocean such a callous bitch? Because in time we took to the earth and we reluctantly looked towards the sun. But we never forget the waves, we never forgot from where we came, and we formed our wombs in honour of our own salt water mother; we kept our young in a warm well in our bodies, we longed for them to feel what we could not, or simply to be shaped in the image of us.

But no matter how your mother treats you, it is hard-wired within us to answer her call. It is the instinct that has carried us to this point. The biological law carved into the deepest parts of us. When you don't know what to do, where do you go? How did nature herself rear you to solve the question, what do I do?

With the dragon's burning blood dripping from his jaws, Will embraced the stag and all his antlers. The night was cold and the blood was black and he knew they needed a home. A home where the stag could have his antlers and where he could have his teeth and the blood could always be black.

A home that death built.

So Will strengthened his arms around Hannibal's body and together, they fell.

. . .

Water chased down his throat, and Will let it.

He clung to the weight that dragged him down, down, down, and he swallowed all the water he could. Because, like this, they could be together. Here, amongst the waves, they could be. Swallowed by unfeeling and destructive waves, they had a home. There was no right or wrong amongst this blue, just the lurching of bodies held by a callous force. It was simpler here, and he wondered if this was how Hannibal viewed the world. No sense of morality, no ethics, and no guilt to be had. For the ocean didn't feel bad for how it took hold of Will's body and slammed him against the ragged cliff-face, splitting his chest like folding paper. It was a question of power and dominance, and the ocean merely took what it was owed.

It was calming, he thought. The space beneath the waves was calming and simple. He could see the appeal. He wondered (vaguely, vaguely he wondered, because there was no room left in his body for water, and though he was sunk beneath the waves he thought he could hear and feel a black tide lapping at the back of his mind, a dimming light) how many of Hannibal's victims had fought back against him. Did they writhe, did they struggle? Or did they feel what Will felt right now? An understanding, an acceptance, a quiet—

His body lurched. Snatched from the currents and pulled towards something solid, something warm. But 'something' was redundant phrasing, because Will knew exactly what it was. What had taken him. What was constricting around his chest and dragging him effortlessly through the heavy, watery throes. Because what else could defy such power? Who else could dominate something completely unfeeling, undaunted, and endlessly angry? He parted his lips to reason, to explain why he had taken them into this darkness, to talk of antlers and teeth and the blackest of blood, but there was so much water in his body, his lungs, his stomach, and he only took in more. Soon it would erase his possession. There would be no need for pronouns. He would not be he and his lungs would not be his, but instead the. The lungs of the ocean. The lungs the ocean took. The lungs he gave to the waves.

His body lurched once more, this time further. He peered open his eyes and barely felt the sting of salt. The black-blue-dark around him began to lighten. The water swirled and jolted unevenly close by. Defiance. He—not Will, He—was striking out, batting away the ocean's hungry maw, churning his feet to carry them forward. Should Will be fighting, too? But why? He had brought them here, to the place that could be their home. Was he prey for longing for it? But, how could he be prey when there was still blood amongst his teeth? Prey blood, sour and thin. When his muscles—those not numb from the cold waves—still ached from the hunt. But, oh, what did it matter? Maybe there was a place between for him, never prey but not predator. Maybe that was the place he was taking them. Antlers and teeth and blood turned black. Black antlers and bloody teeth. Antler teeth and blood black. And Him.

The thought soothed Will. Him, him, him. Death could build the house but it would not be a home without Him.

And then his head broke water, and the dark of night came down upon him and birthed him raw.

. . .

Sudden instinct seized him in a clawed grasp, and Will fought with virile rage to suck in breath. But there was so much water inside of him, and when he tore his mouth open it all leaked out. With it it carried the blood, the sharp-burning-salty-searing dragon's blood, and the absence of his spoils of slaughter made him panic. Made him shudder. The water was a terrible beast who coiled around his legs and tried to drown him. Tried to drag him under. He'd sunk willingly beneath the waves and thought of home but now with the biting frigid-freezing-screaming wind on his cheek and neck he felt alive, or his body did, or some part of him felt real enough to howl and shudder. The home he sought had teeth, bared at the last moment, and he clung to the solid form that clung to him. Legs found waist and arms found neck and waterlogged nails (did they even still bear proof of his dragon slay?) scrabbled at skin. He tried to breathe but there was too much water. It flooded out of him. It snarled with bubbling rage at his weak attempts to dispel it. It liked his lungs and his stomach and it wanted to stay. It wanted him. He was prey and his predator—

"Will," came a voice—the voice of a predator. But not the predator that yearned to drag him below, to drown him. The predator that he clung to, the predator that kept his head above the waves. "Can you hear me?"

Will could hear him, but what could he do about it? He couldn't speak past all the water in his mouth, his lungs, his stomach. His eyes slid shut, and as they did he found a comforting blackness wholly unlike the blue-dark-drown that he'd just been torn from. A blackness that whispered a different sort of tide, a lapping whisper at the back of his mind, tempting him towards its calm embrace, offering an encompassing, calm, quiet-numb—

"Not that way," came the predator's voice, soft and whispered and guiding. "Towards me, Will. Towards my voice."

Will turned his head towards the voice. Turned his body towards it. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it. It was warmth and elegance and steady. A soft rasp. But how was he turning his head? His body? He couldn't feel the latter, and the former was a heavy weight that bent his neck. But he had a body he could move and a head he could turn, and the dark oceanic night began to flicker. The blue waves became blue walls and the distant hanging moon split and curved into two hollow tusks. The black and churning surface of the water became a table, elongated and slender. The voice was there, with him, a golden light of velvet and silk, radiant at the edges. He was in two places at once, freezing and dry, drowning and standing, dying and—living?

"We are almost there," said the predator's voice, and the wispy golden light glowed with each cadence, each syllable. "Look up, Will. Towards the stars. You are still beneath them, and so am I."

Will lifted his head. The ceiling of the room cracked and split away and revealed a night sky full of gleaming lights, all silver and knife-sharp. Dimly he wondered how this could be. How he could be both drowning in the ocean and standing in Hannibal's dining room. Was this a memory palace? Had he found his own?

He kept his eyes on the stars above his head. He took a deep breath and found that he could. The smell of smoke, oleander, pine and basil came to him. Oregano, parsley, garlic, ginger, nutmeg—

"What are you making?" he asked, his voice perfectly unbroken.

The golden light before him seemed to smile. "A place. For us."

Will frowned. He'd been asking about cooking. "When's it going to be ready?"

"Soon," said the golden light. As it pulsed with the word, the dining table began to fade and the stars above started to fall like silver rain. "Soon, mylimasis."

Will didn't want to go. The air was dry here and he could breathe. It didn't matter that he was drowning in the other place, that his lungs were flooded and his chest was split and sobbing blood. None of that could touch him here. But the stars were falling like rain, and they covered him until he was soaked. Until they fell past his lips and into his lungs and took his breath.

Then, with a quiet slowness, a single silver droplet ran the curve of his chin and the bow of his neck. When it reached his chest it shattered, and he watched himself burst open.

The pain tore him from the comforting warmth of his memory palace. He expected water and drowning and no-room-left-inside, but instead was delivered upon rough and coarse earth and battered at each side with terrible, howling wind. For a moment he longed for the ocean. Longed for the sensation of being held on all sides. Long to be restrained into a sense of safety. Out here (where? where was here?) he felt raw, exposed, vulnerable. That was until the pallid and silvery moonlight that shown down upon his body was cast aside by shadows, a broad figure rearing over him. Warmth touched him, brushed him, heavy and wet but unmistakable heat. First his legs, his hips, his sides—he was numb, too numb to do anything but shudder and shake, but he recognised the touch of Hannibal's hands. His palms. Broad as him, wide, purposeful. Familiar.

"Will," Hannibal's voice rung above the din of gale. Cut through the howling slaughter. Sliced through the whipping wind and made a place for itself. "I need you to listen to my voice. I need you to focus upon it. Ignore all else. Take each of my words in your mind. Hold them there."

Will tried to nod, but his body was not his own. He felt like an observer sitting too close to the stage. He was neither actor nor audience. Living nor dead. He found himself between two worlds, but at least he had His voice with him, here. So he did as Hannibal said (after all, when has he not?) and fell into his words and all their golden light, allowing the glittering silk to bind his wrists and ghost across his veins. He wondered if this was truly how it felt to die. He expected to feel an uneven and sudden jolt from his heart at the thought. Waited for panic and fear. But all he felt was nothing and a dull pain that came and went, removed and distant. If this was death, he thought, then it was fitting that Hannibal was with him. He could imagine no other passing. He considered his life before Hannibal and every near-death moment, such as the time he slipped while ice-fishing on Lake Montebello. The ice had cracked beneath his feet and failed to come back together again, and when the frigid waters numbed his body and dragged him down, he'd been convinced that he'd met his end.

But now in hindsight it felt silly. Just as it felt silly to remember the certainty he felt that he was going to die when he was a very young boy on the docks with his father, and he'd slipped on a slimy plank of wood and clung to the edges of the pier, refusing to look over his shoulder at the harsh drop into hard, rocky ground. The tide had been out. Death was certain. But it wasn't, was it? No, not at all. He had nothing to worry about. Death was saving itself, and there was nothing in life that could touch him until Him.

Will did not live until he met Hannibal, and likewise he would not die without him. Now that he could see that, it seemed so obvious. Why had he ever been afraid?

Warmth soothed the freezing skin of his chin, tilting his head backwards. Pressure squeezed the bridge of his nose. Warm, rough lips crushed against his and forced breath into his body, breath that glided down his throat still lashing with salt-sunk-water. But there was no room in his body for it, not until he felt hands come down upon his split-bleeding-broken chest and force the water out.

All at once Will was dragged back into his body. All at once he felt arms, legs, fingers, toes, throat—he gasped and shuddered and shook, he jerked onto his side and threw up lungfuls of water that fell from him in an endless flood. "There," came a voice, faint behind the tsunami. "Get it out, Will. All of it."

Will didn't feel like he had much of a choice. Pain exploded in his body all bright-white-searing, but he continued to cough and heave until he finally felt empty. He didn't realise how full the water had made him until it was gone, and with a low keen he sunk back down and drew ragged, desperate breaths. His vision was blurred, the world spun, and only faintly could he make out Hannibal's face above him, all sharp planes glowing at their edges with moonlight. Behind him was a backdrop of stars, and for a moment the pain became so much that the distant lights seemed to fall like rain, just like they had in his memory palace. He opened his mouth to speak, to explain, but all he could muster was a rasping gasp, a hoarse cough.

"You must save your energy," Hannibal murmured, placing a hand upon Will's cheek. His touch was so warm that it burned him. "If you are to survive this. I have faith that you will."

Will tried once more to speak, but when no sound fell from his lips he resigned to thinking his response. Survive this? he stared at the vague, churning shape of Hannibal above him. I survived you, didn't I? In place of speaking he tried to touch, tried to reach out towards Hannibal and feel the living beat-beat-beat of his heart, his pulse, or the thrum of life beneath his skin just to assure himself that this was real, but his body was heavy and unresponsive and when he lifted himself an inch, Hannibal pushed him back down. "You are hurt, Will," he said, calm and steady and quiet. "Do not try to move."

Will gazed at him, blind and lost. He rolled his head to the side, enough to try and look at his chest, but all he could see was a pool of black blood from his neck to his ribs. When he drew his next breath he felt broken, wrong, his wilting lungs pushing against bone that should not be there, his body rising and falling with foreign movement. "Help," he wheezed out, every letter a knife-tip splitting the delicate flesh inside his throat. "H-Help me…"

"Would that I could, Will," Hannibal said softly, stroking his thumb across Will's cheek, leaving a burning blaze in its wake. "Would that I could," he repeated, this time with the faintest weight in his tone, a whisper of a crack.

"I-It—" Will couldn't stop shaking. His teeth chattered so violently that he caught his lip and his mouth filled with blood—but this was not dragon's blood, not boiling-searing-hot-violent, but his own. Thin and watery and sour. Prey blood. Was he prey, after all? "I-It w-w-was f-for us," he forced out, feeling his body seize and jolt as the pain dug deeper and deeper. "W-We c-c-could b-be, there, u-us."

Hannibal stared down at him, drawing the tip of this thumb across the thin skin beneath Will's eye. "Is that the only place you see for us?"

Yes. The word stuck in his throat. He saw a place for them in the dark-deep-blue, in the calm-violent-thrashing, in the endless-heavy-drowning. There was nothing there but them and isn't that the only place they can be? How could they possibly exist here? In the howling gale, in the open space, in the uncertainty of freedom and choice. It was too much. There was too much. It was terrifying.

Hannibal rose from over Will, spilling moonlight back onto his broken body. Panic flared in his ruined chest and he struck out, trying to grasp at Hannibal's wrist. "D-Don't," Will pleaded. "D-Don't g-g-go."

Hannibal had fallen just as he had. Hannibal had been thrown about by the waves and soaked through, yet he stood while Will lay. His hair was flat against his head, his shirt clinging to every inch of leonine muscle in his body. The light of the moon made him glow. Turned the colour of his antlers to silver. Accentuated every violent edge. Hannibal effortlessly pulled his arm away, Will's hand falling limp and useless back at his side. "I must."

"No," Will gasped, edging onto his elbows to try and push himself up. The pain struck him like lightning, but still he tried. "P-Please—"

"You must find a place for me, Will," Hannibal said, tilting his head towards the dark of night and all the raining silver stars. "A place for us."

Will tried to speak. Tried to shake his head. Tried to rescind his words because how could Hannibal be leaving again? He had endured this pain once, had died and fell into maddening politeness except it wasn't just politeness, it was numb and nothing and empty and cruel. It was a world without colour or point or feeling. He'd told himself it was better, reasoned to himself that he just needed time, but those three years dragged like centuries, and his short time back with Hannibal felt like seconds. Savagely alive, endlessly feeling, violently meaningful seconds.

But Hannibal was leaving. He lowered his head. For a moment Will hoped he would look at him, that he could look at him, that he could stare at Hannibal's face and commit it to better memory. For he no longer had just a stream, he had the fledgling of a palace but it was no palace at all if Hannibal was not in it. He wanted not just the golden light of his voice but him. But Hannibal didn't look back. He walked away from Will. The only betrayal of their fall being the whisper of a limp in his step. A tired slope of his shoulders. So minute that Will knew only he could see it. Nobody else would notice. There were gestures and movements reserved only for him.

Soundlessly, he opened his mouth. He sought to call Hannibal's name. But there was no sound. Only the crashing of the waves against the shore, and the silence of the night. And the nothing that was intrinsically bound to Hannibal's absence.