Disclaimer: I don't own NBC's "Hannibal" or Jerry Bruckheimer's "King Arthur," wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: This is an AU/reincarnation fiction involving "Hannibal" and the movie "King Arthur," specially revolving around a romantic relationship between Hannibal (who is the reincarnation of Tristan) and Will Graham (who is the reincarnation of Galahad). This story was made possible by a prompt on the Hannibal kinkmeme. Please see original chapter for complete information regarding the specifics of this prompt.
Warnings: Contains spoilers for the movie, and just to be safe, all of Hannibal, season one, adult language, canon appropriate violence, gore, murder, emotional and mental manipulation, implied cannibalism and mature content.
Rinascere
Chapter Six
Heat spread through him, fast like a fever, a blush. His gorge rose up in the back of his throat, saliva stretched thin in his mouth, oily. He felt faint, his head was pounding. Everything was too loud, too much-
He swallowed hard, tasting bile. The remnants of his evening meal threatened to repeat itself as he tried to center himself, his tongue flooded with the aftertaste of a particularly exquisite Choucroute garnie – now sullied with the tang of saliva and watered down stomach acids.
Such a waste.
The others were talking, making noise, telling him how they'd found him, how they'd known it was him, how they'd followed him and waited, biding their time until he was theirs to court. But he wasn't listening. He felt overstimulated, over-saturated.
His best laid plans were crumbling.
It was a unique experience watching one of his machinations fail, rare. It left him feeling dissatisfied, singular. Unfulfilled. The pleasure he'd felt at taking Ronald Jefferson's life, of elevating him, had turned to ashes in his mouth. They had done this, Arthur and the others - ruining one of his most decadent hunts with their poisonous words and false promises. And worse, they almost had him believing it, that they, that he could really be-
His pulse echoed in his ears, heart beat thrumming at his temples. Fast, too fast. He struggled to regain control of himself and the situation, but found it illusive. Gauche.
Static hissed across his vision and suddenly he found himself in a different place - a stranger to the words coming out of his lips as a memory, half-shrouded and dark, played out on the edge of his conscious mind. His hair was long, braided and hanging in front of his eyes. His knife carved into the softness of an apple, succulent and tart, just one of the handful he'd snatched from one of the serving girls a few minutes before - a redhead with summer curls and a freckled nose.
The young man from before, Galahad, was throwing knives with a long-haired and bearded Gawain, teasing the boy companionably when he missed his mark by a finger's length. His own hand moved, so fast he barely had time to register, aiming deftly the second before the knife flew from his grip, sinking dead center into the soft bone handle of the blade that Galahad had just buried into the chair leg.
"Tristan!" the man exclaimed, his tone a mixture of exasperation, awe and surprise as he whirled to face him. His dark curls were wild around his face, lips ale-slick and enticing as the sound of laughter echoed around them.
"How do you do that?" Gawain demanded, arm wrapped around the waist of a pretty, dark haired thing, the butcher's daughter. The woman had lately taken to hanging around whenever they returned from a mission. Gawain had already had her twice and neither of them seemed keen to leave it at that, regardless of the looks they'd all started to get from her father whenever they dropped off their meat to dress after a hunt.
Gawain always had tended to think with his cock before his brain.
"I aim for the middle," he replied, smirking around his slice of apple as Gawain simply stared at him, unsure if he was being serious or if he was making a fool of him.
A surprisingly genuine smile spread across his lips as he leaned back, catching Galahad's eye from behind the curtain of his long, dark brown hair, the tartness of wild apple flowing across his tongue as Bors' voice suddenly rose above the din.
"Shut up!" the man roared, dragging his woman out from the ale hut, with his latest child, a healthy boy of only a few months born while they were off patrolling the northern borders, held half-hazardly in her arms.
"Vanora will sing!" he declared, eyes warm with pride as everyone's attention was diverted from their own affairs. Even the click-click from the dicing tables was quickly muted. Only the newly arrived Romans looked confused as to why. Vanora's talents, as well as her fiery temper, were almost legend. Bors was a lucky man to have ensnared such a woman.
"Sing about home!" Galahad urged, taking a long swallow of ale as Vanora finally allowed herself to be pulled out into the middle of the courtyard, an embarrassed smile lighting up her face as she held the babe to her breast, rocking him.
The air was still when she began to sing, anticipatory. He leaned up against a wooden beam, listening. His fingers slackened around the knife in his hand as she began to sing.
"…Land of bear and land of eagle, land that gave us birth and blessing. Land that called us ever homewards, we will go home across the mountains. We will go home, we will go home. We will go home across the mountains…"
The world narrowed. Galahad's eyes were shining, longing, as a foreign yet strangely familiar emotion stirred in his breast. Home.
He nearly stumbled, wrenching himself back to the present with the force of a near physical blow. Recognition seared – because he knew that song, it was from that same smattering collection of notes that he'd coveted all his life, a broken melody from a song that wasn't supposed to exist.
His stomach churned, thoughts confused, as his tongue darted out, unconsciously trying to capture the lingering taste of wild apple on his lips. There had been something appealing about the bitter tart, something familiar in the way the flesh had crumbled under the press of his tongue, so soft that the thin slices had almost disintegrated before he could swallow.
He ground his teeth. No. This wasn't right. It couldn't be true, that was imposs-
Snatches of words, half remembered from his time in boarding school, reeled through his mind. The memories became jumbled, interchangeable with his studies at John Hopkins and his first forays into psychoanalysis when he decided trade in his scalpel for a pen. Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, it is our views that change and the impact we have on nature itself. Reality should be linear, definite. But it wasn't. Not now, not then, not ever. Lies are the swan song that a confident man lacks. Nothing was set-
He shuddered. He didn't understand. Something was wrong. He couldn't think, he couldn't-
A/N #2: Thank you for reading. I realize this type of a crossover is something of a rarity so please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – The next chapter should be up soon!
"The world is a wheel," he said. "When we rise or fall, we do it together." ― Cassandra Clare, (from the Clockwork Princess."